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OPINION:
On Jan. 2, 2020, almost the same day that the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan began its terrifying grip on the world, a court in China’s northeastern province of Jilin sentenced Dr. Li Ning, one of China’s foremost animal geneticists and the youngest member of the National Academy of Engineers, to 12 years in prison.
His crime? Embezzling roughly $5 million in research funds. Yet, the far graver offense — for which he was never charged — was emblematic of a deeper, more insidious malpractice: the disturbingly common practice of selling laboratory animals for human consumption.
According to court documents, nearly a third of the embezzled funds — $1.4 million — had been generated through the sale of certainly genetically modified pigs, cows and cow’s milk used in his laboratory’s experiments in a span of four years. This revelation was not an anomaly but a symptom of a systemic crisis.
Weeks earlier, outbreaks of a deadly infectious disease, brucellosis, erupted in China’s two premier animal research institutes: the Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, a P3 biosafety facility under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, one of only two virology institutes in China certified for P4 biosafety containment, along with the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Brucellosis, transmitted from animals to humans through human consumption of infected meat or unpasteurized dairy products, spread rapidly. On Nov. 28, 2019, four researchers at LVRI tested positive. Within a week, the outbreak ballooned to 96 cases. By the time the Wuhan outbreak began, at least 181 researchers at LVRI had been infected. Eventually, Chinese CDC records show that 55,725 individuals in Lanzhou were tested, with 6,620 confirmed cases of this entirely preventable, man-made epidemic.
Simultaneously, another outbreak of brucellosis unfolded at the P4-certified HVRI in Harbin, Heilongjiang province. By Dec. 10, 2019, 13 researchers had been officially diagnosed.
Against this grim backdrop, it is hardly surprising that days later, when reports of a novel coronavirus began emerging from Wuhan, public fury immediately turned to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Accusations surfaced that WIV had engaged in reckless and illicit practices: selling laboratory animals as pets, mishandling and improperly disposing of dead lab specimens, and even consuming lab-used eggs.
The uproar forced WIV’s most infamous scientist, Dr. Shi Zhengli, China’s so-called “Batwoman” and the head of WIV’s extensive coronavirus research project, to issue a defensive public statement. “The outbreak of the coronavirus in 2019 is nature’s punishment for humans’ uncivilized life habits,” she proclaimed.
A tacit admission that human consumption of virus-carrying animals played a role? Perhaps. What remains indisputable is that when challenged to an open debate regarding WIV’s animal management failures by a well-informed critic known as “Dr. Wu Xiaohua,” Dr. Shi remained silent.
Dr. Wu has since vanished from public discourse. Despite international demands for accountability, Dr. Shi has retreated into obscurity, leaving behind an unheeded warning and a death toll exceeding 19 million victims worldwide.
China’s insatiable appetite for exotic and laboratory-treated animals has repeatedly served as the breeding ground for pandemics. The 2003 SARS outbreak was officially linked to the consumption of virus-infected civet cats. COVID-19 followed an eerily similar trajectory, only this time, the tainted meat and dairy products appear to have originated not from a wet market alone but from China’s biological laboratories, where rogue scientists and ethically bankrupt researchers facilitated their release into the human food chain.
Thus, the debate over whether COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the nearby Huanan wet market is a false dichotomy. The undeniable truth remains: China’s biolabs have recklessly funneled dangerous, infected animals into public circulation, endangering not just their own people but also the entire planet.
The ramifications of China’s voracious and unscrupulous consumption practices extend far beyond pandemics.
This relentless animal exploitation has driven wildlife extinction, depleted fish populations, eroded biodiversity, disrupted food chains, escalated the risk of infectious diseases, destroyed coral reefs and razed rainforests. But the gravest consequence is its devastating impact on global health — fueling catastrophic disease outbreaks, exacerbating resistance to antibiotics and bringing the world to its knees.
The international community must recognize China’s “food and mouth disease” as an existential threat, on par with the Chinese Communist Party’s egregious human rights violations, technological theft, military expansionism and systematic subversion of the global order. As the Chinese adage warns: “Diseases enter the body through the mouth.”
If the world does not act decisively, China’s insatiable and reckless appetite will continue to devour everything in its path.
• Miles Yu is the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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