Source: UNEP Frontiers 2016 Report: Emerging Issues of Environmental Concern
Wild aNIMALS, DOMESTICATED ANIMALS, and pandemic THREATS
Sadly, COVID-19 is only one example in a long history of human-animal interactions leading to pandemic disease.
Three out of every four new or emerging infectious diseases in humans come from animals. Humans are deforesting and encroaching on ecosystems, where wild animals are reservoirs of novel diseases, at a breathless pace. The livestock sector, the single largest anthropogenic user of land, is a major driver of deforestation and ecosystem destruction. Additionally, domesticated animals are bridges through which diseases from wild animals can transmit to humans. Human contact with domesticated animals has resulted in many familiar diseases: Influenza viruses from pigs and birds, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) from bats via domesticated camels, and Salmonella from chickens. Factory farms are providing the ideal conditions for such diseases to mutate and spread rapidly.
WHERE wILL THE NEXT PANDEMIC COME FROM?
We don’t know when the next pandemic will hit, but we can be certain that our current system of mass animal exploitation is creating endless opportunities for diseases to jump from animals to humans. Flu viruses are particularly worrisome because they have the potential to infect billions of people in a short time period. H5N1, a strain of bird flu, has a 60% mortality rate for humans. So far it hasn’t easily transmitted from human to human, but it has already jumped from domesticated birds to pigs, causing experts to worry that it could be evolving the ability to spread more easily between mammals.
GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO LEAD A TRANSITION TO A KINDER, SAFER FOOD SYSTEM
It’s clear that to prevent future pandemics, governments and institutions need to lead the transition to a kinder, safer food system. One way to start the change today is to divest public funds and stop them from being used to prop up the industry. Ask your local government to use city funds to purchase plant-based foods in place of factory-farmed animal products.
Sources:
UNEP Frontiers 2016 Report: Emerging Issues of Environmental Concern
Bloomberg News: Preventing Disease May Start With Supply Chains
Scientific American: Deforestation is leading to more infectious diseases in humans
Los Angeles Times Op-Ed: COVID-19 shows that what we’re doing to animals is killing us, too
