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After receiving multiple complaints from constituents, New York City Council Member Bob Holden visited live animal markets in Queens and Brooklyn. In these storefront slaughterhouses, also called viveros, customers select the animals who they want to eat, and workers kill them on premises. Among the approximately 12 species sold in NYC’s 70 live markets are chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, turkeys, quails, rabbits, goats, sheep and cows. The large mammals are held in pens, and the rabbits and birds are stored in cages.

After touring the markets in Queens and Brooklyn, Council Member Holden, said he was “appalled” by what he found inside: “The conditions are horrendous and barbaric. The animals are packed in. We saw birds with open sores, and we saw sick and dead birds in the cages. I don’t know how anyone can buy these birds. We’re going to do some investigation to find out how this is allowed, and we’re going to try to put a stop to it. It’s unconscionable.”

During an unannounced visit to a live animal market in Brooklyn, NYC Council Member Bob Holden encounters chickens with wounds and dead chickens mixed in with the living.

The city’s live animal markets were thrust into the national spotlight in early 2020 when the media reported that COVID was likely transmitted from animals to humans in a similar market in Wuhan, China. Despite this revelation, then Governor Andrew Cuomo deemed the state’s live markets “essential businesses.” Astonished by this designation, public health and animal welfare advocates staged protests in front of several of NYC’s markets to raise awareness of the public health risks.

During the first few months of the pandemic, media outlets reported on the ongoing efforts of advocacy groups to shut down the City’s 70 live animal markets

At the start of the pandemic lockdown, Dr. James Desmond, a veterinarian and infectious disease researcher based in Liberia, told TheirTurn, “Wet markets that sell live animals house different species in close proximity to each other and to humans. If different strains of influenza in any of these species combine to create a new flu strain, then a more lethal outbreak could occur, similar to the H2N2 pandemic of 1957.”

In response to constituent complaints, NYC Council Member Bob Holden visits a live animal market in his Queens district.

In 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was serving as the Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called for the closure of live animal markets in Asia, perhaps unaware of their presence in the United States. “I think they should shut down those things right away. It boggles my mind how, when we have so many diseases that emanate out of that unusual human/animal interface, that we don’t just shut it down.”

In 2022 and 2023, avian flu was detected in several live animal markets in New York City. Hundreds of birds were culled in an effort to contain the spread.

News coverage of avian flu outbreaks in live animal markets in NYC in 2022 and 2023

New York City’s live animal markets are regulated by the New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets. Based on the findings in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the agency rarely cites the markets for violations of the city and state’s health and sanitation codes. It also rarely shuts down or suspends operations of the markets do have violations. Neighbors say that the lack of enforcement enables the owners to keep animals in squalid conditions and leave feces, urine and blood on the public sidewalks in front of the stores.

Two advocacy groups in NYC, Slaughter Free NYC and NYCLASS, have been campaigning to shut down the city’s live animal markets for several years. The Executive Director of NYCLASS, Edita Birnkrant, points to several reasons why they don’t belong. “In addition to violating health, sanitation and cruelty codes, many of the markets are likely violating zoning laws. Research conducted by The NYC Bar Association Animal Law Committee concluded that ‘many of the live animal markets are operating either without a certificate of occupancy or in potential violation of the uses permitted in the subject zoning district.’”

Map of live animal markets, or storefront slaughterhouses, in NYC created by the advocacy group Slaughter Free NYC

In recent years, several cows have escaped live animal markets and fled through congested city streets. In two cases, New Jersey-based Skylands Animal Sanctuary rescued the cows and gave them a forever home.

New York Times coverage of Freddie’s escape from a New York City storefront slaughterhouse

In posts on social media, many people credited their switch to a plant-based diet on the mainstream media coverage of the dramatic escapes and rescues. “I didn’t want to know about cows [being slaughtered] because I was addicted to cow ice cream,” said New York City resident Martha Mooney Waltien.” Then one day, Freddie ran from the slaughterhouse, and I saw his face. He was so scared, and he wanted to live. And I thought, ‘No more cheeseburgers.’”

New York City has over 80 wet markets – businesses that sell live animals to the public and slaughter them onsite.  New York’s live animal markets are located in all five boroughs.

Since 2016, public health and animal rights advocates have been sounding alarm bells about the City’s wet markets, pleading with health officials and lawmakers to shut them down in order to prevent the transmission and spread of infectious disease. COVID-19 is believed to have been transmitted from animal to human in a wet market in Wuhan, China.

Sheep and chickens are among the approximately 10 different species of live animals sold at NYC’s wet markets

NYC’s wet markets sell approximately ten animal species, including goats, sheep, chickens, guinea hens, rabbits, pigeons, Muscovy ducks, and quail.  The animals are confined in small cages or pens where they can sicken each other and the people who work and shop there. Animal feces, body parts, feathers and blood are tracked in and out by customers and pedestrians who then carry the refuse on to the subways and into their homes, offices and communities.

Wet markets, or live animal markets, are storefront slaughterhouses that sell live animals to public and slaughter them on site

“New York City’s wet markets are a ticking time bomb,” said Jill Carnegie, a co-organizer with Slaughter Free NYC, an organization advocating to shut down wet markets and other slaughterhouses in NYC. “If avian flu or another infectious disease is transmitted to just one human, it could spread very rapidly in New York City and beyond, as we have seen with COVID-19.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the advocates’ sense of urgency. Slaughter Free NYC is now asking Mayor Bill de Blasio, Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot and Deputy Commissioner of Disease Control Dr. Demetre Daskalakis to prohibit the slaughter of live animals in the five boroughs of New York. In February, the organization launched a petition with its demand.

In a letter to NY Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NY State Department of Agriculture & Markets, Bonnie S. Klapper, a New York City-based attorney working on several cases involving animal agriculture, wrote that City and State health authorities are turning a blind eye to the well-documented health code violations

Click letter to view in full

“The NYC Department of Health claims that it has no regulatory authority over these markets and defers to NY State Department of Agriculture & Markets, but state health officials have told me that these wet markets are never inspected unless they receive numerous complaints,” Klapper told TheirTurn. “That said, no amount of oversight can prevent disease transmission in storefront slaughterhouses where sick animals are coming into contact with humans.”

PCRM Petition to the Surgeon General to outlaw live markets in the United State

On March 25th, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sent a letter to the Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) encouraging him to call for the permanent closure of [wet] markets:  “Deadly outbreaks of mad cow disease, avian flu, swine flu, SARS, HIV, hoof-and-mouth disease and others have stemmed from capturing or farming animals for food. Live animal markets are perfect breeding grounds for diseases, which can jump from various others species to humans . . . If we’re to prevent future pandemics, we must heed the warning of top coronavirus researchers like Dr. Danielle Anderson, scientific director of the Duke-NUS Medical School, and cut them off at the source.”

In partnership with The Save Movement, an organization that stages vigils at slaughterhouses around the word, Slaughter Free NYC conducts vigils and educational outreach at New York City’s wet markets.

Esther Ouwehand, a Member of Parliament (MP) in the Netherlands, is championing a bill to ban the slaughter of animals who aren’t first rendered unconscious (stunned). In an interview with TheirTurn, MP Ouwehand says that “all forms of animal slaughter are cruel, but killing animals while they’re fully conscious inflicts an additional level of stress and pain.”

Slaughtering animals before stunning them is already illegal in The Netherlands, but an exception is made for halal and kosher slaughterhouses that kill animals while they’re fully conscious.  The legislation being championed by MP Ouwehand and her colleagues in the Animal Rights Party would eliminate that exemption.

According to MP Ouwehand, “When the legislation passes, it will be the first time that a country places the interests of animals over religious freedom.”

Jill Phipps, the British animal rights activist who was killed while blocking a trailer transporting veal calves, was remembered by animal rights activists around the world who held protests at slaughterhouses in her memory.

In New York City, activists marched through Astoria, Queens, to a slaughterhouse and staged a silent vigil at the entrance. Inside, hundreds of chickens stacked in crates were being killed, butchered and sold. With the help of a few determined activists, one chicken made it out alive and is living in peace at a sanctuary for rescued farm animals. The activists named her Jill.

Animal rights activists rescued a chicken from a slaughterhouse during a protest staged in memory of British animal rights campaigner, Jill Phipps

The life and advocacy of Jill Phipps, who died fighting for animal liberation when she was just 31 years old, is documented in the 40 minute film, Death of an Animal Activist:

While eating in a restaurant in Brooklyn, Jenny Amlen saw skinned lambs being unloaded from a nearby truck. At that moment, she made the connection between the burger on her plate and the animal who was killed for it.

“I saw almost 100 slaughtered lambs being thrown into a shopping cart in broad daylight. I saw their eyes, and it was devastating, shocking and heartbreaking. I thought then that they were mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers just like us,” said Jenny Amlen. “Honestly, it reminded me of the Holocaust. It was just lambs instead of humans.”

Jenny sent the video footage to TheirTurn and said that the incident prompted her to go vegan.

Jenny Amlen saw skinned lambs being unloaded from a truck and decided to go vegan.

To order a free vegan starter kit please visit PETA