Review: Options for Managing and Tracing

Wild Animal Trade Chains to Reduce Zoonotic Risk

Legal wildlife trade continues to be an essential source of income and sustenance for communities worldwide. However, to reduce potential zoonotic disease emergence and transmission related to wild animal trade, there is an urgent need for a range of interdisciplinary responses:

• Where wild animal trade cannot be conducted in a safe, sustainable, and legal manner, responses may need to focus on restricting trade and strictly enforcing relevant laws to combat illegal, unsustainable and unsafe practices.
• Where wild animal trade is legal, its sourcing, use and trade must be carefully managed to ensure that risks to human health and the sustainability of wild animal populations are monitored and mitigated.

How can legal wildlife trade be better managed for safety and sustainability?

Applying Food safety risk management systems

Adapting existing food safety protocols to identify hazards and manage disease risks associated with wildlife trade could be a practical approach to preventing future zoonotic spillover events at a variety of human-animal interfaces.

The trade of higher-risk taxa such as wild mammals and birds can facilitate potential disease risks at various supply chain stages. For example, live specimens – whether of wild or captive origin – being kept in close quarters while in transit, or held at live animal markets where livestock can also be present, could increase the risk of disease transmission.

The Review’s case studies consider how the HACCP framework (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) – a long-standing set of principles used in food safety systems – is being applied to tackle transmission risk at the various stages of wild animal supply chains.

Exploring how existing systems can be modified is a significant step towards better managing the trade in wild animals to reduce the risk of zoonotic disease transmission and the emergence of novel pathogens.”

Sam Campbell, Wildlife TRAPS Project Officer and lead author of the Review

This Review includes three case studies of established wild animal trade systems to illustrate the supply chain management practices, traceability measures, and regulatory structures involved. These include Australia’s kangaroo meat trade, sourced from hunting of wild populations; South Africa’s ostrich meat trade, sourced from captive farming; and France’s venison trade, sourced from a combination of hunting and captive production.

Other supply chain management and traceability tools considered in the Review include third-party certification, blockchain, and digital traceability applications. The Review draws on additional supply chain examples from fisheries and plant resources trade. 

Traceability is vital

For wild animal trade to occur legally, safely, and sustainably, wild animals and their products need to be diligently documented and traced throughout the supply chain to identify sustainability and health risk points, restrict illegal and unsafe activities, and assure consistent implementation of control measures.

Recent concerns of zoonotic disease transmission through wildlife trade have increased attention to the need for traceability following COVID-19. The integrity of a supply chain to exclude wild animal products from illegal and unsustainable sources or products at risk of introducing zoonotic pathogens depends on having systems that enable control and transparency.”

Glenn Sant, TRAFFIC’s Senior Advisor on Traceability

Currently, monitoring for health risks mainly focuses on food safety concerns like contamination and spoilage, but in domestic and wild animal supply chains, there is a growing need to ensure the trade in wild animals carries minimal risk of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs). Traceability systems would enable a better understanding of a wildlife trade supply chain by monitoring critical points to gather data on where, how, and under what regulatory conditions a product – whether live, partly processed, or as parts and derivatives – was sourced, prepared and transported towards the end-user.

Understanding the structure and steps in the trade chain for animals and products from consumer to source is an essential step in evaluating and managing the risks of that chain. Existing traceability practices for domesticated livestock make food traceability a helpful starting point to understand regulatory contexts.

What needs to happen?

The Review recommends the need for a multisectoral approach in line with One Health. Government authorities and experts working in public and animal health, food safety, natural resource management, and law enforcement need to collaborate and share knowledge across different wild animal trade systems to:

• Improve supply chain management
• Test traceability approaches
• Create minimum biosecurity standards for legal wild animal trade
• Reduce illicit and unsafe practices

We call on governments, private sector and non-governmental stakeholders to act on this major opportunity to use and document how existing traceability approaches can be adapted to encourage positive shifts in wildlife trade, benefitting species and people.”

Anastasiya Timoshyna, TRAFFIC’s Director of Strategy, Programme, and Impact

Watch our webinar "Options for Managing and Tracing Wild Animal Trade Chains to Reduce Zoonotic Risk".

To promote continual adoption of better supply chain management practices and traceability, Social and Behaviour Change interventions are also needed to target and support critical actors throughout the supply chain, from production to consumption.  

This Review builds on the Wildlife TRAPS project’s Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) Situation Analysis published in December 2021, and together these assessments will guide a series of pilot interventions under the Wildlife TRAPS Project over the next two years.