bushmeat

And don’t eat them! – A 62-year-old African woman living in Paris who tested positive for HIV is carrying a new strain of the virus which comes from gorillas. This was probably caused by eating illegally imported bush meat (monkey meat), which is considered a delicacy by many Africans living in Europe.

In the August 3rd edition of the Independent, Lewis Smith reports that the woman, who is from Cameroon, denies having contact with live gorillas or eating gorilla meat. However, meat from primates has been declared illegal in most European countries, since it can transmit both HIV and Ebola, so she may not want to admit buying it. Her HIV has not yet morphed into AIDS.
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Tanzania is trying to stop the sale of human skin. At an international business fair there, visitors will see a gruesome exhibit of human body parts in the government’s effort to discourage the underground trade in human skin. And nuns have discovered a trafficking network in children’s sex organs in Mozambique.

The skin and sex organs are used in shamanic ceremonies. Tanzanian forensic scientist Gloria Machube says, “People are skinned and the skin is used for their rituals. But fortunately they are caught by the police.”

In 2001, police arrested 13 members of a skin-smuggling ring and charged them with murder. The price of the human skins range from $2,400 to $9,600, depending on the age of the victim.
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Animals on the endangered species list are not only dying because their habitats are being destroyed?they’re also being eaten, as bushmeat. Five million tons of bushmeat come from the Congo basin alone every year, threatening several species, including elephants and great apes. A lot of it is exported to Africans living abroad.

In bbcnews.com, Alex Kirby quotes Adam Matthews, director of the Bushmeat Campaign, as saying, “[A] study said 150 million people?one in eight of the world’s poor?depend on wildlife for both protein and income.”
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As much as ten tons of African bushmeat, from endangered species such as chimpanzees and gorillas, may be sold in London every day. So much is being sold that some African countries hardly have any animals left to poach. Despite recent efforts to save the great apes, there?s a great danger that they may soon become extinct in the wild.

A new English TV documentary called ?No Hiding Place? follows Karl Amman, a Swiss national who has spent the last eight years in central Africa, in the border area between the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He investigates the bushmeat trade and has discovered that the number of wild chimpanzees in the region is down to about 200,000. There were several million chimps there in the l960s.
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