Why we shouldn't eat bats

¹³ ‘And these you shall regard as an abomination among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, ¹⁴ the kite, and the falcon after its kind; ¹⁵ every raven after its kind, ¹⁶ the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the sea gull, and the hawk after its kind; ¹⁷ the little owl, the fisher owl, and the screech owl; ¹⁸ the white owl, the jackdaw, and the carrion vulture; ¹⁹ the stork, the heron after its kind, the hoopoe, and the bat.     [Leviticus 11:13-17]

¹¹ You may eat any clean bird. ¹² But these you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, ¹³ the red kite, the black kite, any kind of falcon, ¹⁴ any kind of raven, ¹⁵ the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, ¹⁶ the little owl, the great owl, the white owl, ¹⁷ the desert owl, the osprey, the cormorant, ¹⁸ the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat.      [Deuteronomy 14: 11-18]

Apart from the zoological error of classifying bats as birds, both these passages clearly indicate that bats are considered unclean and must not be eaten.

Bats are about the most pathogen-laden animals in the world. Bats can carry up to 5,000 different pathogens or more. In recent decades there has been a great increase in the number of human infections associated with bat viruses. Nevertheless, bats are regularly eaten in many parts of the world, including China.

So far, it is believed that the current coronavirus pandemic called COVID-19 originated from bats at a “wet market” in the megacity of Wuhan, China. It is also thought that one or more pathogens were transmitted there from bats to humans. All kinds of wild and exotic animals were sold there until the government shut this market down.

Studies have shown that bats can carry hundreds of different types of coronavirus and that the COVID-19 genome is at least 96% the same as the genome of a coronavirus in bats, making it fairly certain COVID-19 came from bats.

After the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, which was believed to have been caused by people eating bats, China was criticized for not outlawing the eating of bats. But when COVID-19 was discovered to have originated from bats at the wet market in Wuhan, China responded (in January 2020) by banning the eating of bats.

So don’t be fooled by the preachers telling us that the pandemic is God’s judgement on mankind for some other sin. It is nothing of the kind. It is the natural consequence of ignoring God’s laws in the first place.