Below, please find a statement from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk in response to the World Health Organization’s new announcement that—because of the zoonotic disease threat posed by live-animal markets—it’s urging governments to suspend the trade in live-caught mammals:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has now taken one of the two steps that PETA requested of it during a solid year of appeals, undercover video recordings of live-animal markets, “blood”-soaked protests, and gathering signatures from more than 200,000 supporters. WHO is recommending a suspension of the trade in live mammalian wild animals but ignoring the plight of chickens, ducks, fish, and frogs who are caged and slaughtered in filth and leaving the door open for the next pandemic to emerge. Every live-animal market must close, whether it sells bats in Indonesia or birds in Brooklyn.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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