Authorities in the province of Hubei, China, had seized hundreds of bamboo rats from a farmer before burying the animals alive due to coronavirus fears.
Amid the crackdown on wild animal trade, Hubei officials discovered that a farmer had been breeding bamboo rats and keeping some 900 of them on their farm.
The bamboo rats, which have been deemed a specialty dish in China for centuries, have previously been linked to coronavirus, prompting the authorities to cull them following the ban on wild animal meat back in February.
As Xianning Television reported, the recent culling of nine hundred bamboo rats took place on a farm under the authority of the city of Xianning.
After the rats had been seized, the officials dug out a deep pit in the forest before dumping the animals inside and burying them.
Besides bamboo rats, the Xian’an District Forest Bureau was recently also tasked with disposing of thousands of pounds of snakes and eggs along with seven porcupines bred by local farmers for consumption.
While the exact source of the novel coronavirus remains a mystery, a prominent Chinese epidemiologist, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, previously suggested that the outbreak could be a result of eating bamboo rat meat.
Meanwhile, other experts in the field suggested that eating wild animals such as snakes and bats is more likely to be the source of the transmission of the virus to humans.
According to the reports, an estimate of 25 million bamboo rats was held on farms in the country before the wild animal meat ban came into effect.
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Replaced!