{"id":11850,"date":"2026-04-15T13:21:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11850"},"modified":"2026-04-15T13:21:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:21:37","slug":"global-wildlife-trade-fuels-spread-of-disease-from-animals-to-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/04\/15\/global-wildlife-trade-fuels-spread-of-disease-from-animals-to-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Wildlife Trade Fuels Spread of Disease From Animals to People"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p id=\"article-summary\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/14\/science\/wildlife-trade-disease-spillover.html\">NYT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"article-summary\">Live animal markets and the illegal sale of wildlife pose particular dangers, but any sale of wild animals or animal products poses spillover risks, a new study suggests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The global wildlife trade is driving the spread of disease from animals to people, according to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.adw5518\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"a new study, opens in a new window\">a new study<\/a>&nbsp;of thousands of wild mammal species and 40 years of international trade records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Species that have been sold on the international wildlife market, which includes both live animals and animal products, were 50 percent more likely than species that were not traded to share pathogens with humans, scientists found. And the longer that a species had been part of the global wildlife trade, the more pathogens it shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The spread of zoonotic diseases, or those that can pass from animals to humans, is an inherent part of the global wildlife trade, the researchers concluded. But live animal markets and the illegal wildlife trade appear to amplify these risks, according to the study, which was published in Science last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s no safe trade,\u201d said Jerome Gippet, an ecologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and an author of the paper. \u201cAs long as we continue trading species, we will expose ourselves to this problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/04\/14\/science\/wildlife-trade-disease-spillover.html\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NYT Live animal markets and the illegal sale of wildlife pose particular dangers, but any sale of wild animals or animal products poses spillover risks, a new study suggests. The global wildlife trade is driving the spread of disease from animals to people, according to&nbsp;a new study&nbsp;of thousands of wild mammal species and 40 years [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-infectious-diseases","category-featured-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11851,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11850\/revisions\/11851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}