Word: civets
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...turns out that few people actually enjoy the taste of pangolin?a scaly anteater whose flesh is a blend of gristle and rubber. The same goes for the nocturnal civet, which has a gamy aftertaste that even the thickest brown sauce can't mask. And who really enjoys camel hump, which tastes just as you'd expect a blubbery lump to taste? But flavor isn't what really matters to many of the diners tucking into China's wildlife menagerie. "Businessmen come here to prove their wealth," says George Ng, a Shanghai-based restaurateur who specialized in cobra and other...
...With the recent discovery that SARS may have leapfrogged to humans from exotic delicacies like the civet cat and raccoon dog, Beijing has launched a massive crackdown on the wildlife trade. In the past week, police have combed wet markets in metropolises like Guangzhou and Shanghai, confiscating writhing bags filled with all manner of beast. But eating yewei, or wild-flavor cuisine, is a key element of new China's conspicuous consumption, and it won't be easy to curb the appetites of the nation's voracious businessmen and discerning government officials...
...team of Chinese microbiologists last week confirmed that the civet could indeed produce a unique effect on the human body: it might cause SARS. They've also extracted the virus from a species of wild dog and found antibodies?evidence of an earlier infection?in a Chinese badger. Those results probably confirm the long-dreaded notion that overly close cohabitation of man and animal is brewing up new, fatal plagues. Hong Kong's bird flu of 1997 was just such a creation: a virus harmless in waterfowl that jumped species to infect chickens and then mutated again, killing six people...
...early May, scientists from HKU and Shenzhen's Center for Disease Control decided to test animals sold in one large food market in Shenzhen, including house cats, hares, beavers and the Chinese muntjac, a small deer. When they examined sputum, feces and blood of the masked palm civet, they hit pay dirt. All six of the civets tested, according to Professor K.Y. Yuen, head of the microbiology department at HKU, carried huge amounts of a coronavirus strikingly similar to the SARS agent. The scientists sequenced its genome and found the two viruses to be nearly identical. The World Health Organization...
...solve this mystery and discover the real origins of SARS, scientists like Dr. Yi, the energetic microbiologist who plucked some of the civets from Shenzhen food markets himself by grabbing the slippery cats by the feet, will continue testing animals in the province, widening the net to other species. "The sampling work is very hard and difficult," Yi says. "This could take years and years." One animal they may have trouble finding is the civet. Chinese police have cracked down, and the civet cages were all empty at Guangzhou's sprawling Sinyuan market over the weekend...