China Is Perfect Breeding Ground for Viruses Like SARS, Expert Says
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
May 6, 2003
news.nationalgeographic.com
For a virulent virus seeking to jump from animals to humans China's Guangdong province may be the perfect habitat.
Along the highways, ubiquitous farms are lined up next to each other, with farmers tending their ducks, chickens, and pigs in teeming and cramped quarters. In the city's food stalls, meanwhile, vendors keep their meat—alive and dead—in cages and baskets stacked on top of each other. Customers can choose from a menu of rats, cats, dogs, frogs, snakes, and exotic birds.
In such unhygienic conditions, scientists have long warned, it's just a matter of time before a hidden and potentially lethal virus would make the leap from animal to man. It should come as no surprise, then, that one virus—the enigmatic coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS—in all likelihood did.
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