Crocodile meat disappears from restaurant apps in China amid Wuhan coronavirus outbreak

Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo remove wild animals like masked palm civet and badgers from search results after a market selling the meat was identified as a potential source of the outbreak

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Published: 10:18pm, 24 Jan 2020Updated: 5:00pm, 16 Feb 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

With top experts in China saying wild animals were the source of the new deadly coronavirus coming out of Wuhan, searches for certain animals are disappearing on Chinese ecommerce and restaurant platforms.

Although the sale of wild animal meat without a license has long been illegal, many merchants still fly under the radar, selling popular wild game online. But now anyone looking for some obscure meat could have a hard time with their search.

Searches for masked palm civet return no results across Taobao, Suning and Pinduoduo. On JD.com, the keyword isn’t banned, but the results are only books on how to tame them. (Picture: Alibaba/JD/Suning/Pinduoduo)

Ecommerce sites like Taobao, Pinduoduo and Suning no longer show any results for searches related to many animals, including badgers, musk deer and masked palm civet. The World Health Organization believes civets could have been an intermediate for the coronavirus between bats and humans. Restaurant and delivery apps such as Ele.me and Meituan Dianping have also seemingly started cracking down on these searches.

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(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Ele.me owner Alibaba.)