[Eating bats whether shoehorn or other variations of bats is the problem it would appear ]
I don’t think eating bats is the problem. It’s processing bats. We eat beef without getting e coli poisoning. We eat chicken without getting salmonella poisoning. We eat venison without getting Lyme disease. We eat pork without getting trichinosis or hep e. If they want to eat bats, they should require these flying rats to be harvested in the wild by specialists, dipped into diluted bleach or some kind of pathogen killing wash and flash frozen. The live markets are an opportunity for different viruses to meet and procreate. For bat viruses in particular, it’s a veritable orgy.
The bat caves in Africa were sealed off to people. Apparently it’s not just eating the bats, but visiting bat caves with deep guano can transfer their zoonotic diseases to humans.
Of course, selling diseased bats at the markets and slaughtering g them in unsanitary conditions makes it a million times more likely people will encounter the disease.
But Ebola proves a highly contagious disease starting in bats doesn’t require bat consumption to spread.