The claim: "China is to blame because the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that, these viruses are transmitted from the animal to the people and that's why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses like SARS, like MERS, the Swine Flu and now the coronavirus." — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Cornyn made the comments in interviews with reporters on March 18.

PolitiFact ruling: False. Cornyn is wrong that MERS and the Swine Flu were first identified in humans in China. He is right that SARS and the new coronavirus were first identified in humans there.

The problem with Cornyn’s claim is his assertion that Chinese culture is at fault. Experts said the threat of viral transmission from animal to human is not unique to China, and the risk of this kind of spillover is growing globally as humans come into closer contact with animals.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Plus, experts noted that any consumption of the animals Cornyn mentioned is not, in itself, the problem.

About PolitiFact PolitiFact is a fact-checking project to help you sort out fact from fiction in politics. Truth-O-Meter ratings are determined by a panel of three editors. The burden of proof is on the speaker, and PolitiFact rates statements based on the information known at the time the statement is made

Read More

Discussion: Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie said Cornyn’s statement is referring to the culture behind so-called wet markets in China, where live animals are slaughtered on the premises and then sold.

"If people didn’t eat that type of meat, wet markets would not exist," he said in an interview, referencing the animals Cornyn identified in his remarks.

But Peter Li, associate professor of East Asian Politics at the University of Houston, said this type of cuisine is not representative of Chinese culture.

"Chinese as a whole do not have wildlife eating habit," Li said in an email. "It is the eating habit of a small number of people, just like a small number of people in the U.S. dare to eat rattlesnakes or the like. … The eating habit is not Chinese and not traditional."

Even considering the small population that may consume these animals, Adam Kamradt-Scott, an associate professor of global health security at the University of Sydney in Australia, said "The consumption of exotic meats is not, in itself, the problem."

"The issue is instead the level and extent of the human-animal interface that wet markets permit," he said in an email. "Having said this, we have yet to identify the host animal for the COVID-19 virus. … It has also not been verified whether the COVID-19 virus infected humans at the wet market in Wuhan, only that some of the first cases to be identified had a history of having visited the wet market."

Researchers have yet to pinpoint when, where or how the virus was transmitted from animals to humans.

"It was originally suggested that it began at the Wuhan fish market, but there is no longer good evidence to support that," said Vincent Racaniello, a virology professor in the Microbiology and Immunology Department at Columbia University who is researching the virus. "The first case was not associated with that market and now we think there were earlier clusters in November not associated with the market."

Racaniello pointed to a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine at the end of January by researchers in China looking at the first 425 confirmed cases of the virus.

The data shows that while the first reported cases of the new virus were linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, the first identified case of the virus predated the publicly reported cases and was found in a person with no connection to the market.

Other researchers also identified early cases unrelated to the market.

It’s true that wet markets pose a risk of viruses to be transmitted from animals to humans, but experts said this risk exists across the globe and is not unique to China.

"No country in the world monopolizes the outbreaks of epidemics," said Li, the University of Houston professor.

Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist and president of the research organization EcoHealth Alliance, said pandemics are on the rise and the world’s strategy for dealing with these illnesses is "woefully inadequate," in an op-ed for the New York Times.

Daszak wrote:

"These spillovers are increasing exponentially as our ecological footprint brings us closer to wildlife in remote areas and the wildlife trade brings these animals into urban centers. Unprecedented road-building, deforestation, land clearing and agricultural development, as well as globalized travel and trade, make us supremely susceptible to pathogens like coronaviruses."