Phys.org The use of social media by West African vendors to promote the illegal sale of bushmeat should be regulated to help prevent the emergence of diseases transmitted from animals to humans, a new study suggests.
“Due to the widespread impacts of social media and evidence of the bushmeat trade in other countries such as in Europe, we wanted to investigate if social media provides a potential link between bushmeat vendors in Africa and consumers in other parts of the world,” said Georgia Moloney, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
The researchers analyzed Facebook posts promoting wild meat, published between 2018 and 2022 from five Facebook pages in Côte d’Ivoire and one in Nigeria.
They identified 25 bushmeat species made up of mammals, birds and reptiles. Almost two-thirds of these were advertised as smoked while the others were sold as fresh, cooked or alive.