Smoked monkey and whole sharks: the suitcase smugglers feeding Europe’s hunger for bushmeat
At Brussels airport, customs staff are digging into suitcases and cooler boxes full of charred meats and fish. There are boxes of flies with shriveled dead caterpillars and juicy live ones. It is 6 am, and they are checking all hold luggage in four morning flights – three from Africa and one from China – in an attempt to stem the flow of illegal meat from wildlife making its way into Europe via this major t***sit hub. There is a lingering smell of dried seafood.
Staff here are used to finding all kinds of creatures in baggage, from a 1.5-metre basking shark folded inside a box to a whole smoked monkey. But most meat comes dried, smoked, charred, and chopped, so it is hard to identify it. In some cases, that’s probably the point.
A hunk of meat being confiscated could be from a cane rat, catfish, monkey, or pangolin – or it could just be a bit of beef.
Researchers estimate that 3.9 tonnes of bushmeat a month is smuggled through this airport, including bits of elephants, pangolins, and crocodiles, and demand for bushmeat has become one of the main drivers of wildlife trafficking.
The trade in some species has created a “significant extinction threat” to some wildlife populations, particularly in Asia, Africa, and South America, according to the first global assessment of hunting’s effect on terrestrial mammals
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/01/suitcase-smugglers-feeding-europe-bushmeat-wildlife-endangered
America 1 wrote:
At Brussels airport, customs staff are digging into suitcases and cooler boxes full of charred meats and fish. There are boxes of flies with shriveled dead caterpillars and juicy live ones. It is 6 am, and they are checking all hold luggage in four morning flights – three from Africa and one from China – in an attempt to stem the flow of illegal meat from wildlife making its way into Europe via this major t***sit hub. There is a lingering smell of dried seafood.
Staff here are used to finding all kinds of creatures in baggage, from a 1.5-metre basking shark folded inside a box to a whole smoked monkey. But most meat comes dried, smoked, charred, and chopped, so it is hard to identify it. In some cases, that’s probably the point.
A hunk of meat being confiscated could be from a cane rat, catfish, monkey, or pangolin – or it could just be a bit of beef.
Researchers estimate that 3.9 tonnes of bushmeat a month is smuggled through this airport, including bits of elephants, pangolins, and crocodiles, and demand for bushmeat has become one of the main drivers of wildlife trafficking.
The trade in some species has created a “significant extinction threat” to some wildlife populations, particularly in Asia, Africa, and South America, according to the first global assessment of hunting’s effect on terrestrial mammals
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/01/suitcase-smugglers-feeding-europe-bushmeat-wildlife-endangeredAt Brussels airport, customs staff are digging int... (
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Sounds like the recent 'migrants' ache for some good ole home cookin'.
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