THE daily flood of busy doctors and nurses engaged in the fight against SARS appearing on TV has reminded Lu Peili, a local woman in her 40s, of the outbreak of hepatitis A in Shanghai in 1988.

　　"SARS has become the most important topic nowadays," Lu said. "While in the spring of 1988, reports about hepatitis A also became the most important item in newspaper and TV programmes."

　　The epidemic in 1988 in Shanghai was recorded as a rare outbreak of hepatitis in the world, with more than 310,000 people hospitalized, including 31 deaths, due to the disease from January to May.

　　It is reported that in the period from the January 30 to February 14, the daily number of reported new cases exceeded 10,000, hitting 19,013 on February 1. Yet, according to medical research, the total number of hepatitis A virus carriers would be four times as large as the number of patients, reaching 1.2 million in the city, out of a total population of 12 million.

　　"At that time, almost each household might have a patient, and my aunt, uncle and nephew all got the disease," Lu recalled. "Without enough wards, many empty rooms such as bath rooms and classrooms were used as temporary wards, and patients even brought quilts from home because hospitals did not have enough bedding."

　　Finally, doctors and scientists traced the virus to the ark shell, a kind of mollusk, from Qidong in neighbouring Jiangsu Province, and experts found that the ark shells which appeared on dining tables of many local households were badly polluted.

　　However, local people did not cook them at all, and a popular way of eating the ark shells was to dunk them quickly in boiled water.

　　"Then, people ate them, after dipping them in vinegar," Lu said. "They were not so tender and delicious if cooked."

　　No one could imagine that such a small animal could shake such a huge city, bringing a direct economic loss of 500 million yuan, according to estimates by local experts. Since then, Shanghai government has put a ban on the sales of ark shells in the city. It is still in force.

　　"From then on, our family and relatives did not dare to buy them again although some vendors still sold them," she added.

　　Wild game crackdown

　　Currently, although the cause of SARS has not been found, some have already raised their doubts about animals, which once again have stirred a heated discussion on Chinese dining habits.

　　In mid-April, scientists in Hong Kong said that the SARS virus might have come from animals.

　　In early May, Shanghai experts also announced that they had isolated particles of the virus, and found it to be similar to those infecting cattle and mice.

　　Among the first identified SARS cases in Guangdong Province, many were either chefs or waiters in different restaurants, most of whom did not know each other but all had close contacts with animals.

　　According to China Business, one SARS patient, called Wu Jinqiao, had long been a snake vendor in Guangzhou. He said his daily routine involved selling snakes in the morning, then playing poker with friends. Besides family members and friends, he spent most of his time with snakes.

　　In China's millennia-long dining culture, animals have become important ingredients in many dishes, which include snakes, pigeons, frogs, dogs and some insects. In Guangzhou, local people even eat cats and mice.

　　A recent survey conducted in 21 large and medium-size cities by the National Forestry Administration found that some 46 per cent of those interviewed said they had eaten wild animals. Among these, some 38.3 per cent did so out of curiosity, while 45.8 per cent believed that these animals had great nutritional value and contributed to good health.

　　In a recent national campaign named Spring Thunder, aimed at protecting wild animals, which started from April 10, police in Guangdong cracked down on 317 relevant cases within 10 days, punishing some 5,500 restaurants together with 957 markets, and seizing 59,000 wild animals, including many under the State-level protection.

　　Although there is still no convincing evidence to prove the speculation that SARS derives from animals, voices calling on people to abandon the custom of eating wild animals has swelled and echoed around the country, spreading through the media and especially the Internet. Experts warned that people should give up such bad habits both to better protect the animals, and to prevent the spread of diseases from animals to human beings.

　　Scientific research has already found that many infectious and even fatal diseases plaguing human beings originate among animals, including smallpox, malaria, plague, measles, cholera and AIDS.

　　Xu Hongfa, professor from School of Life Science of East China Normal University said it has long been believed that eating wild animals is helpful for human health, yet most diners ignored the fact these animals had been poached and were served in restaurants without inspection by health experts. Many parasites were also regularly found in these animals.

　　Dining habits

　　As more people became aware of the potential danger hidden among wild animals with the spread of SARS, another dining revolution was initiated in the country: each diner should have their own plate at the table instead of 10 people using their chopsticks to reach for food from one plate in the centre of a table.

　　It has long been a Chinese tradition that a family sat around and took food with their own chopsticks from a big pot or plate, a custom many Chinese associate with intimacy and affection in the family.

　　An urgent notice has already been issued asking all restaurants to adopt the pattern of individual plates, and public chopsticks for each dish were also recommended.

　　Sources from the Shanghai Municipal Commercial Commission said that about 10 per cent of restaurants provide the service of individual plates among the more than 30,000 restaurants in the city. Officials said it would be a good thing if the threat of SARS made people realize the necessity of this system.

　　Shi Rong, deputy director of the Public Health College of Shanghai No.2 Medical University said such a pattern was once proposed in 1988 during the hepatitis A epidemic, and it was by no means a makeshift measure to deal with SARS.

　　According to the Jiefang Daily, based on research by scientists, it was found that Asian people accounted for the biggest proportion of carriers of the gastric ulcer virus and the hepatitis B virus.

　　Shi stressed that chopsticks were the prime culprits, especially when 10 pairs of chopsticks dug into the same plate of food.

　　"Although flying spittle is now considered the main channel for spreading SARS, there is no proof that SARS does not spread through the alimentary canal," he said.