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. 2023 Jul 25:17:100605.
doi: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2023.100605. eCollection 2023 Dec.

Examining the international bushmeat traffic in Belgium: A threat to conservation and public health

Anne-Lise Chaber  1   2 , Georgia Kate Moloney  1   2 , Veronique Renault  3 , Sandrella Morrison-Lanjouw  4   5 , Mutien Garigliany  3 , Lucette Flandroy  6 , Daniel Pires  7   8 , Valeria Busoni  3 , Claude Saegerman  3 , Philippe Gaubert  9   9
Affiliations

Examining the international bushmeat traffic in Belgium: A threat to conservation and public health

Anne-Lise Chaber et al. One Health. .

Abstract

The carriage of bushmeat into the European Union is an infringement of EU Animal Health and Wildlife Trade legislation and poses a threat to biodiversity and public health. To explore the nature and scale of the international bushmeat trade, seized leaking luggage and passengers arriving at Brussels Zaventem airport from sub-Saharan Africa between 2017 and 2018 were searched for "meat" (bushmeat and livestock) by border control authorities. Visual identification, radiography and genetic analysis were applied to derive information from seized specimens, including at least ten CITES-listed species. We estimate that an average of 3.9 t of bushmeat is smuggled monthly through Brussels. The average consignment of meat seized per passenger was 2.8 kg and 4 kg of bushmeat or domestic livestock meat, respectively. The international trafficking of bushmeat is evidently active, yet penalties are rarely enforced; hence we provide suggestions to simplify law enforcement procedures.

Keywords: Africa; Bushmeat; CITES; Europe; Illegal wildlife trade.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare there are no conflicts of interest in this project.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The illegal meat selection and sampling process implemented by border control authorities at Brussels Zaventem airport during the 2017–2018 survey.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Origin of bushmeat (by weight) carried by passengers travelling to a) Belgium, b) Paris and c) Switzerland on flights originating from African departure points. Increasing colour intensity represents the proportion of the total quantity of bushmeat seized originating from these regions. Seizures of bushmeat reported in Paris (b) were from passengers travelling on Air France flights arriving at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport from Central and West Africa in June 2008 [9]. Similarly, Swiss customs (c) seized bushmeat products transiting through two airports, Zürich Flughafen and Genève Aéroport, between 2011 and 2013 [31].
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
DNA-typing refinement across samples (A) and taxa (B-C) as applied to the genetic samples taken from flight seizures at Brussels Zaventem airport. A) Genetic re-assignment of sample types from a priori identifications (x-axis); B and C) Taxonomic representation – per species (domestic meat; B) and orders (bushmeat; C) – of the corrections (black area) and improvements (white area) of the seizure samples supported by the DNA-typing approach. Grey areas represent correct a priori identifications (B). Numbers correspond to the sample sizes.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Pie-Donut chart representing the DNA-typing taxonomic assignment of the bushmeat species seized from flights originating from sub-Saharan Africa to Brussels Zaventem airport. In capitals (pie), taxonomic orders with their respective contributions (in brackets) relative to the total number of genetic samples. In the donut, the 27 species-level taxa genetically identified, together with their sample sizes. Species in red and orange are listed on the Appendices I and II of the CITES, respectively. The Pie-Donut chart was built using webr package in R. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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