The
US is very keen on pets, exotic or otherwise, and as a result every year it
imports approximately 110M wild animals (see refs in (1)). But the even more
surprising figure is that of the importation of non-live wildlife – that is a
staggering 25M kg/annum (see also ref 1 sources). Some of this comes in cooked,
smoked or raw.
These
imports are monitored and legal, but underlying this is a significant trade in
smuggled bushmeat from the African continent. Some of these are primates
(non-human of course) such as chimpanzees, mangabeys and baboons, while others
are rodents like rats including cane rats.
Of
course these are only a minute fraction of the US diet and not to be found on
your average supermarket shelves, but the problem is that they can be hosts to
viruses. A USFWS study, reported on by Smith et al in PLoS one found things
like simian foamy virus and some herpesviruses in some of the samples
confiscated from smugglers (1). The viruses were identified by genomic
analysis.
To
put the problem in perspective simian foamy virus is a relative of SIV and then
HIV, so that’s not a good thing to be washing down with a fine wine at dinner.
Also, you’ll recall that the SARS outbreak of a few years ago was traced back
to munching on palm civets caught in the wild.
Perhaps
its time to go with the new trend in the Netherlands of moving over to eating
insects (2). I understand that there is at least one restaurant in Amsterdam
catering for insectivores instead of carnivores.
I
should note that for those enthusiasts of correct English, insectivores are
normally reserved for animal insect eaters, for human insect eating the
preferred term (little used so far) is entomophagy. Entomophagy is not widely
practiced yet as part of the standard Western diet, although about 80% of the
nations of the world indulge quite happily (ref Wikipedia).
- http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029505#pone.0029505-Smith1
- http://www.dutchdailynews.com/eating-insects/