UK imports wild animals from known disease hotspots to feed exotic pet trade

Our study used data obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), showing the numbers of wild animal imports between 2014 to 2018. It showed animals including African pygmy hedgehogs, snakes, lizards and tortoises being transported to the UK in shocking quantities:

• 2,492,156 amphibians
• 578,772 reptiles
• 150,638 mammals
• 99,111 birds

UK imports of live wild animals 2014-18

This data was acquired by Freedom of Information request to the Animal and Plant Health Agency and represents imports of non-domesticated vertebrates, excluding fish, not regulated by CITES.

All were imported into the UK for commercial purposes including the exotic pet trade, from 90 countries including in tropical regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America identified as emerging disease hotspots. Countries such as Singapore, Ghana, Indonesia, El Salvador, Cameroon, Nicaragua and Madagascar, annually exported thousands of reptiles and amphibians to the UK over this five-year period.

Mammals were also imported from Europe in large quantities. This poses a particular public health risk because many diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans involve mammals.

Top 10 wildlife exporting countries to the UK between 2014-18

This data was acquired by Freedom of Information request to the Animal and Plant Health Agency and represents imports of non-domesticated vertebrates, excluding fish, not regulated by CITES.

70% of all zoonotic emerging infectious diseases are thought to originate from wild animals and over 35 infectious diseases have emerged in humans since 1982, including COVID-19, SARS, Ebola and MERS. Importing animals in such numbers risks the spread of such diseases, caused by harmful viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites introduced into new environments.

Illegal vs legal trade

Public attention is typically focussed on illegal wildlife trade, for example species threatened by extinction that are protected by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), but this is dwarfed by legal trade into the UK that takes place outside these regulations, despite the public health risk it presents and the cruelty and suffering it causes.

The wildlife trade brings wild animals with immune systems weakened by the stress of captivity and transport in unnatural proximity to other animals, into close contact with people, often in unsanitary conditions, creating a lethal hotbed of disease. The current global pandemic is widely believed to have originated in a ‘wet’ market selling wildlife in Wuhan, China, under conditions like these. 

Public health risks associated with wild animal imports into the UK

• Reptiles imported from tropical countries have a high possibility of carrying potentially dangerous pathogens. It is thought that reptiles act as vectors for diseases that affect human health (such as Q fever and Lyme disease) and are responsible for some of the UK’s reported human Salmonella cases.
   
• Amphibians have the potential to act as vectors for zoonotic disease transfer, for example, they can be responsible for human cases of bacterial infection such as Aeromonas spp., Mycobacterium marinum, and Salmonella spp. Although it is not a threat to human health, chytridiomycosis (a highly contagious fungal disease among amphibians thought to have contributed to the decline or extinction of at least 501 amphibian species across six continents) was confirmed in a breeding population of bullfrogs in the UK in 2006. Bullfrogs are not native to the UK, their presence is the result of escaped exotic pets, and risks introducing this disease to UK native amphibians.
   
• Mammals: trade records show that the UK imported at least 150,638 mammals (75% of which were rodents) from 51 countries across seven global regions over the five-year study period. Countries including Czech Republic, Italy and Spain, were identified as of particular concern for exporting large volumes of mammals to the UK. Most emerging human diseases are thought to originate from mammals and their import represents a prominent public health concern. An outbreak of monkey pox in the USA during 2003 was linked to the import of rodents from Ghana for the exotic pet trade. It prompted domestic and international trade restrictions to control transmission.
   
• Bats (of which 81 were imported to the UK between 2014-2018, 69 from Madagascar and remaining from Czech Republic and Guyana) have been implicated in the transmission of COVID-19, Ebola, Hendra, Marburg, SARS-coronavirus, Nipah, and various rabies-related viruses.
   
• Birds: the UK imported at least 74,829 parrots from 20 countries in the period 2014 – 2018. In 2007, a permanent import ban on wild caught live birds was imposed to prevent the spread of avian influenza, but this did not extend to those that were captive bred. Bird-associated diseases in humans including histoplasmosis, Q fever, allergic alveolitis, salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, and giardiasis associated with captive sourced bird imports remains an on-going potential public health concern.

In a post-COVID world, we should demand nothing less than a global and permanent ban on the commercial wildlife trade, to protect wild animals, human health and the planet.

World Animal Protection is calling on the UK government to champion a global wildlife trade ban and end the import and export of wild animals into the UK at the G20 meeting of leaders in November.