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Sen. Lindsey Graham threatened that the US-China trade relationship will “change” if Beijing fails to shut down wet markets that sell wild, and at times live, animals that could transmit viruses to humans once eaten.

Speaking during an interview on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said he would be writing a letter to the Chinese ambassador to tell him, “If you don’t shut those wet markets down, our trading relationship is going to change.”

Wet markets are an outdoor series of stalls selling meat, fish, produce and other perishable goods that are popular throughout Asia and Africa. Living and dead animals being sold at these markets include pigs, oxen, ducks, chickens, bats, dogs, monkeys and cats.

“What can China do to help the world? Shut those markets down,” Graham added when talking to the network.

“We think … this whole thing started from a transmission from a bat to a human. About the last three or four pandemics have come from the Chinese wet markets.

“I don’t think this came from a Chinese military lab, but these wet markets are gross, they’re just absolutely disgusting, selling exotic animals that transmit viruses from animals to human beings. Those things need to shut down.”

In the weeks since Beijing has gotten a better handle on the virus, lifting the nationwide lockdown and encouraging people to re-enter society, Chinese nationals have begun purchasing meat from wet markets again, causing alarm for Graham.

“The source of this virus is the Chinese wet markets. But when you look — have doctors who come on and ask them, how many diseases have come from China through these wet markets where you intermingle all kinds of exotic animals, it’s just really a gross display of how you prepare food, that needs to stop.”