Boris Johnson launched a blistering attack on China, blaming its 'demented' traditional medical practices for the coronavirus pandemic.
In a speech to world leaders yesterday he attacked people who 'grind up the scales of a pangolin' in a bid to become more 'potent'.
He made the remarks, which risk a furious diplomatic row - in a speech to the One Planet Summit, hosted by France's President Macron.
Pangolins are heavily-trafficked scaly anteater-like creatures, which have been blamed for transmitting the virus from bats to humans.
The first documented cases of the Covid-19 were in the Chinese city of Wuhan, with a wet market trading in exotic animals being seen as the probable source.
In comments that are likely to risk fury from Beijing, Mr Johnson said: 'Obviously it's right to focus on climate change, obviously it's right to cut CO2 emissions, but we won't achieve a real balance with our planet unless we protect nature as well.
'One final thought, don't forget that the coronavirus pandemic was the product of an imbalance in man's relationship with the natural world.
'Like the original plague which struck the Greeks I seem to remember in book one of the Iliad, it is a zoonotic disease.
'It originates from bats or pangolins, from the demented belief that if you grind up the scales of a pangolin you will somehow become more potent or whatever it is people believe, it originates from this collision between mankind and the natural world and we've got to stop it.'
But China has warned claims against the country will not be tolerated, Bloomberg reported. Today Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said: 'We've said many times that origin tracing is a scientific matter.
'There is no room, no place, for people making speculations, hyping up - otherwise it will only disrupt international co-operation.'
In a speech to world leaders yesterday Mr Johnson (pictured) attacked people who 'grind up the scales of a pangolin' in a bid to become more 'potent'
More than 13,000 animal carcasses including pangolins seized by police in China last year
Pangolins are heavily-trafficked scaly anteater-like creatures, which have been blamed for transmitting the virus from bats to humans
Boris blames China's 'demented' traditional medicine for covid
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Is Covid-19 a bat disease spread by wild food markets or lab accident gone wrong?
Debate about the source of the Covid-19 outbreak that has rocked the world and led to the deaths of two million people - including 80,000 Britons - has been fierce.
The majority of scientists believe it originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, most likely in its 'wet market'.
These are open air food markets and often include meat from animals slaughtered on site. 'Wet' is used to signify it sells fresh produce, as opposed to 'dry' goods that can be anything from durable foods to electronics.
Some - a few - sell captured wild animals and their meat, and this is believed to be how the disease was able to pass from bats to humans.
Investigations by scientists have discovered that pangolins - a valuable illegal commodity in China - could be immune to Covid 19.
This would allow them to act as an unharmed vector carrying the virus from bats deep in the wild, where they live, to public markets where the scaly creatures are illicitly traded.
The black market trade in the creature has also been previously implicated in oubreaks of bird flu.
World Health Organization experts will visit the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019, on Thursday at the start of their investigation into the origins of the pandemic, Chinese authorities have said.
China has denied that the market - or pangolins - are involved in the spread of the virus, and its authoritarian regime has blamed other countries such as India for the outbreak.
Another theory is that the virus was engineered in a Chinese lab.
One of America's most senior government officials last week claimed this was the most 'credible' origin theory.
Matthew Pottinger, president Donald Trump's Deputy National Security Adviser, told politicians from around the world that even China's leaders now openly admit their previous claims that the virus originated in a Wuhan market are false.
Mr Pottinger said that the latest intelligence points to the virus leaking from the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology, 11 miles from the market, saying: 'There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus.'
In a zoom call with UK MPs he claimed the pathogen may have escaped through a 'leak or an accident', adding: 'Even establishment figures in Beijing have openly dismissed the wet market story.'
Like the wet markets, China has denied the lab having anything to do with the outbreak.
The visit to Wuhan by the WHO team is already mired in controversy after it published terms of reference revealing it will not investigate the Wuhan institute – the only laboratory in China with the highest international bio-security grading – as a possible source of Covid-19.
Pangolins inhabit tropical forests in India, China, south-east Asia and parts of Africa.
Out of the eight existing sub-species, three are critically endangered, and all of them are protected by international treaty.
The general hunting and trading of pangolins have been banned in China since the late 1980s, but the exotic mammals are still trafficked by the thousands for their perceived nutritional value.
Their scales are deemed as a previous ingredient by believers of traditional Chinese medicine and its than 123 tons were sold in 2019 on the black market.
People also eat their meat for the supposed health benefits and the animals' blood is seen as a healing tonic.
China has previously denied they are a vector for moving the virus from bats to humans.
Last year researchers in the Communist state found that the animals are indeed natural hosts for various coronaviruses, but do not appear to be the direct source of Covid-19.
In November a different team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences claimed the virus likely originated in India in summer 2019 - jumping from animals to humans via contaminated water - before travelling unnoticed to Wuhan, where it was first detected.
Mr Johnson has previously called for greater protection for pangolins.
In 2018 he wrote a newspaper article calling for greater efforts to track down on hunting and smuggling the mammal.
He wrote: 'As we get older we human beings are capable of all manner of self-deception. We go under the knife in the hope of looking younger. We take pills and potions of dubious efficacity.
'But in the annals of human folly there is surely nothing more delusional than the belief still prevalent in large parts of Asia that a man can somehow rectify his waning virility by grinding and eating the scales of a pangolin.
'And yet that is what they do. The tragedy is that all eight species of pangolin are now endangered, two of them critically so.
'We are losing them to poachers at a rate of 100,000 a year. They are smuggled, butchered and cooked – all for the sake of their mythical medicinal qualities.'
Mr Johnson gathered Cabinet today amid fears lockdown could be tightened within days unless coronavirus numbers ease.
The PM has been holding a virtual meeting with his senior team as they consider the next move in the crisis wreaking havoc on the country.
Ministers have been desperately pleading with Britons to limit their contacts as the NHS struggles to cope with the volume of Covid patients, as police ramp up enforcement of the brutal restrictions.
But the government has made clear it is ready to get even tougher, with leading figures on SAGE pushing for a three metre social rule distancing rule and threats to axe the loophole allowing people to exercise with a friend from another household.
Other options thought to have been considered include making all shopping click and collect, and closing more workplaces.
Matt Hancock hinted at a crackdown on exercising with one other person at a Downing Street briefing last night, saying the exception was being abused to socialise.
In another ominous sign this morning, Mr Johnson tweeted saying that 'meeting others from outside your household or support bubble puts you and others at risk of serious disease'.
However, in a round of interviews policing minister Kit Malthouse risked muddying the message by saying a 70-mile cycle ride would count as 'staying local' under the lockdown rules.
