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Wildlife Consumption, Health, and Zoonotic Disease in China After the Emergence of COVID-19

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Abstract

There has been much discussion in the conservation and policy realms of COVID-19 as a zoonotic disease, or a disease transmitted from wildlife to humans. However, wildlife consumption in China is not only a potential source of disease but also a practice embedded in complex beliefs about health. This paper used survey data (N = 974) collected in China in June 2021 to examine attitudes and behaviors related to (a) wildlife consumption, (b) Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and (c) zoonotic risk after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. 40.1% of respondents self-reported that they are less likely to consume wild animals since the outbreak of COVID-19. Respondents who used wildlife supplements for TCM, who believed in the benefits of wild animal consumption and fresh slaughter of wildlife, and who had higher levels of agreement with the zoonotic origin of COVID-19 were more likely to report that they had decreased their wildlife consumption after the outbreak of COVID-19. Use of wildlife in TCM significantly increased the odds that a respondent believed that COVID-19 was very likely zoonotic. We discuss how situating wildlife consumption within complex beliefs about health and disease can assist with protecting wildlife and public health in the wake of COVID-19.

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Data Availability

The data presented in this study are openly available in Harvard Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HEFW1Z.

Notes

  1. As of 2006, China had 44 universities for TCM education, 166,614 TCM doctors, 21,324 TCM pharmacists, and 28,514 TCM doctors’ assistants who practiced in hospitals, and 33,574 TCM doctors and 7843 TCM doctors’ assistants who practiced in health clinics and community health service centers (Xu and Yang 2009).

  2. Potential limitations due to language/translation issues were minimized through consultation with the bilingual member of our research team (based in China), in which we discussed how the survey questions would be viewed in a Chinese context and adjusted translations accordingly. Further, since the survey was based on quantitative responses rather than free responses, translation was not needed to interpret the data.

  3. Demographic information included age, gender, highest level of education achieved, income, and occupation. Respondents were asked to identify their geographic location as “urban” or “rural,” and to enter their specific region (see Appendix S1).

  4. This text read: “For the purpose of this survey, we define ‘wild animals’ as traditionally non-domesticated animals that are either farmed or caught from the wild. This includes all animals that are not chickens, cows, pigs, goats, or sheep. For example, frogs, snakes, bamboo rats, and crabs are considered wild animals, regardless of whether they are farmed or caught from the wild. We define ‘consumption’ in terms of general use for either food or medicine.”.

  5. Qualtrics sent the survey to a total of 3,789 respondents (inclusive of the soft launch but not the pretests). Many of these respondents did not qualify, were over the quotas for age and gender specifications, or were screened out due to speeding through the survey or answering in an internally contradictory manner. A total of 1369 respondents were terminated because they were over quota (i.e., in an age range or gender category that had already met its quota) and 1236 respondents were terminated for targetable attributes (i.e., were younger than 20, were older than 79, were not located in China, or were screened out because of the supplemental quality control screeners implemented, including 68 respondents excluded due to the speed check). Qualtrics sends their surveys to such a wide audience that it is standard to have more respondents terminate than complete the survey, as occurred in this survey. This left a remaining sample of 1184 good completes. Since we added three additional survey questions after the soft launch, we removed the soft launch respondents from our sample, which left a final sample of 974 respondents.

  6. These screens were designed to allow for a complexity in attitudes while removing respondents who answered the questions without reading/comprehending them. For example, this excluded respondents who said “No, I have never consumed wild animals” but then indicated consumption in a subsequent question or respondents who selected both an answer as well as “none of the above” within the same question.

  7. While some of the dependent variables analyzed with binary logistic regression were drawn from questions that involved multiple (more than two) answers, the distribution of the categories was uneven and thus did not allow for multinomial logistic regression (e.g., the number of respondents in some categories was too small).

  8. Correlations between potential sources of COVID-19 were all under 0.5; correlations between various species as potential transmitters of COVID-19 were all under 0.7, and the correlation between the perceived benefit of fresh slaughter and the perceived benefit of wildlife consumption was 0.4.

  9. Data on China’s population as a whole (which included measures of gender, age, rural/urban residence, and income) were gathered from the China Statistical Yearbook, last collected in 2019: http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2019/indexeh.htm.

  10. This was confirmed through stratification. When only respondents with a pure protection cognition were selected, there was no significant difference in consumption between those who believed in COVID-19’s zoonotic origins and those who didn’t (Pearson chi-square 9.015, p = 0.003). Yet among respondents who held a conditional utilization or pure utilization cognition, people who believed in COVID-19’s zoonotic origins were more likely to report decreased consumption (Pearson chi-square 19.272, p < 0.001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Jessica Bell Rizzolo

  2. Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Annah Zhu

  3. Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China

    Ruishan Chen

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  1. Jessica Bell Rizzolo
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Correspondence to Jessica Bell Rizzolo.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the ethics committee of Michigan State University’s Institutional Review Board (Study Number 00005583).

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Rizzolo, J.B., Zhu, A. & Chen, R. Wildlife Consumption, Health, and Zoonotic Disease in China After the Emergence of COVID-19. EcoHealth 20, 323–342 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-023-01651-w

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