Aaron Nicodemus
Last week it was baboon meat; this week health authorities are warning travellers off eating bats.
Bat meat is apparently being served as a delicacy in some restaurants in the Seychelles, but the British Airways Travel Clinic in Johannesburg warns tourists that eating them could be a health risk. Says Dr Andrew Jamieson, medical director of the clinic: “The rancid nature of this meat gives cause for concern that diners will be exposed to serious infections.”
Alarms have been raised after a number of restaurants in London have started serving bat meat, in contravention of British law and international agreements on the protection of endangered species. Shops and restaurants are selling bat meat for the equivalent of R40/kg. The meat is on sale in markets and certain “African” restaurants, and is purportedly derived from Ghanaian fruit bats.
Bat meat on sale in a Brixton, south London, food market is decomposing and infested with beetle larvae. Another restaurant in south-east London is serving curried bats, complete with rice and vegetables.
Conservation officials are concerned that the bats on offer are from species of fruit bats under threat of extinction. Health officials are concerned about the unhygienic nature of some of the meat samples.
The emergence of Nipah virus in Malaysia, which apparently spread from fruit bats to pigs and then to people, has given rise to concerns that bat meat may be infested with the virus. Nipah virus, which causes fatal encephalitis, has been responsible for killing at least 100 Malaysians. The Malaysian government has been forced to destroy a million pigs in an attempt, so far in vain, to contain the virus. Fruit bats have also been under suspicion as carriers of the deadly Ebola and Marburg viruses.
“It illustrates just how important it is for travellers to … exercise food hygiene, even in developed countries,” says Jamieson.
Plans by a Warmbaths business syndicate to set up a baboon abattoir were put on hold this week, largely as a result of public outrage.
The Department of Agriculture says it won’t give the syndicate permits to move and slaughter baboons, and other businesspeople, as well as the Warmbaths tourism authority, threatened court action if the abattoir goes ahead.
21