'People fear what they don't know': the battle over 'wet' markets, a vital part of culinary culture

Amid the coronavirus, calls have grown to ban the diverse US markets that stock and slaughter live animals. But is that wise?

John Harry was in the mood for chicken curry, so he walked two blocks from home to pick out a couple of birds.

His destination was a squat warehouse surrounded by auto body shops, a scrapyard, and a school bus depot in the working-class neighborhood of Richmond Hill in Queens, New York. Inside was riotously loud, with the cries of chickens, duck, quail, guinea fowl and the tender pigeons known as squab, jostling for space and pecking seed in tall metal cages. In another room was a pen with lambs and goats butting heads and chewing alfalfa.