Singapore, Jan. 24 -- What hits a visitor to China's wild animal markets immediately is the smell. It is an odour so overwhelmingly putrid that one would leave at once if one did not have any real business to be there.
Chickens, ducks, geese, swans, pigs, goats and sheep are commonplace and kept in separate pens.
Venture deeper into these sprawling markets and one would see pangolins, hedgehogs, porcupines, peacocks, squirrels, foxes, snakes and pheasants. Dogs are packed into larger enclosures with barriers high enough they cannot escape.
Cats are crammed into shallow fruit crates, pressed together so tightly one could not even fit in a toothpick. It is not uncommon to see five or six crates of yowling cats piled on top of one anothe...