Summer 2020
Zoonotic diseases, the cause of most epidemics and pandemics, are caused by human – animal interaction. Globally, many of the most serious infectious diseases are zoonotic, causing an estimated 3 million human deaths per year before the current Covid-19 pandemic. A zoonotic disease is caused by a pathogen that jumps, or “spills over”, from animals to humans. Infections are then transmitted directly among humans. Pathogens include prions, viruses, bacteria, protozoa, parasites, and fungi. Zoonotic disease may be vector born, foodborne, or waterborne.
Emerging diseases are almost invariably zoonotic. An estimated 60% of all viruses that infect humans came from animals, and 75% of all new infectious diseases in the past decade are zoonotic. Examples include Covid-19, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Ebola virus, SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, and Avian Flu, among many, many others. Zoonoses have caused the deadliest pandemics in history: Black Death, Spanish Flu, HIV, and now Covid-19. The global rate of zoonotic disease is increasing. Without understanding the creation and spread of zoonoses, and rectifying these issues, it is impossible to prevent the next pandemic.
COVID-19 originated from an animal in a live animal market. Scientific evidence indicates that the virus originated from a bat coronavirus, then transferred to an intermediate host, either a domestic or wild animal, either in the wild, or kept in captivity. It ultimately evolved into SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, and spread to humans.
HIV/AIDS, also from zoonotic origins, is one of the most serious public health threats of the 21st century. More than 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV and more than 25 million people have died from the disease. HIV/AIDS originated when an established SIV switched from primates to humans through exposure to blood or other secretions of infected primates. This occurred through the hunting and butchering of innocent wild animals. Bites and other injuries caused by primates kept as pet animals can cause a viral transmission according to ‘Future Medicine’.
Ebola virus disease (EVD), also from zoonotic origins, is a deadly disease with outbreaks that occur primarily on the African continent. It is caused by an infection with a group of viruses within the genus Ebolavirus: according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Bird Flu (H5N1) in 1997, and Swine Flu (H1N1) in 2009 emerged from agricultural facilities – factory farms – with horrific conditions. H5N1 has an estimated mortality rate of 60 percent, and could easily mutate and become more lethal. H1N1 is believed to have originated in pigs in North Carolina resulting in more than 200,000 infections and 18,000 human deaths, including 250 children. The innocent, exploited pigs and birds suffered much higher casualties! According to the World Health Organization (Who), the1997 outbreak of H5N1 resulted in the death of an estimated 1.5 million chickens and other birds. The infamous ‘Great Influenza’ of 1918 – 19, also zoonotic, sickened one third of the world’s population and resulted in the death of over 50 million people. The horrific exploitation of domestic and wild birds was the cause.
Modern food production involves billions of high-risk interactions between humans and animals. Innocent, incarcerated animals in the food system are relentlessly stressed, confined, forced to share space with dead or diseased animals, share bodily fluids and airborne pathogens, expel waste on each other, all while being fed a steady supply of antibiotics. The physiological stress that animals endure weakens their immune systems making them much more likely to become vectors of disease. The system invites zoonotic disaster.
Factory farms are epicenters of disease for humans as well as the billions of unfortunate animals involuntarily incarcerated there. Thousands of genetically similar animals are packed together in unsanitary, overcrowded spaces. They are vulnerable to disease and stress placed on their immune systems by these horrific conditions. Factory farms are ideal environments for viruses and other pathogens to circulate, mutate and ‘spill over’ to human exploiters. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) maintains that farmed animals are the weakest link in our global health.
An estimated 99% of the ten billion land animals murdered for food every year in the US alone are imprisoned in factory farms, and murdered with impunity. Innocent animals in factory farms or live markets are severely stressed, cannot engage in natural behaviors, experience frustration, and maladaptive behaviors such as injuring or murdering one another out of survival instinct. Pigs can drop dead from the stress of being confined. All these conditions make animals (amplifier hosts) more susceptible to pathogens, which then get passed on to their human abusers (bridge population), and the human population in general through pandemics.
Live Markets, or ‘wet markets’, offer the sale and on-site slaughter of a multitude of innocent animals, including rare and wild animals. This often includes endangered or threatened wild animals, and other animals who never come into contact with one another in the wild. These markets exist all over the world. Covid-19 is believed to have started in one in Wuhan, China. Customers purchase for both consumption and traditional Chinese medicine.
Eighty percent of the antibiotics produced worldwide are fed to unjustly incarcerated animals raised to be consumed by humans. As a result people suffer antibiotic resistant infections, with a high percentage resulting in mortality. This is in addition to the unparalleled suffering being caused to the sentient beings forced to endure this insanity. It is now well established that abuse of antibiotics fosters new antibiotic resistant diseases for which people will eventually have no defense. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) ‘We are headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill.’
The widespread routine use of manure as fertilizer, and irrigation with contaminated water is a real concern. Salmonella and E. coli can spread to vegetables and contaminate them. Veganic agriculture uses no animal inputs. Instead, it uses ‘green manure’ – plowed under nitrogen rich cover crops. Pathogen runoff from intense animal imprisonment can permeate human water supplies leading to bacterial contamination of rivers and streams impacting both humans and wildlife. These pathogens include fecal coliforms, Streptococcus, Campylobacter, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, as well as viruses, all resulting from the unjust exploitation of other species.
Animal exploitation comes with the accompanying skyrocketing health care costs. The resulting economic burden will be unsustainable in the developing nations.
Zoonotic pandemics are inevitable given the increasing incursion of human beings into wildlife habitat. 75% of earth’s land areas have already been heavily transformed by human activity. Species are presently going extinct at approximately 1,000 times the natural rate. Habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, and humanity’s attendant encroachment on wildlands adds to the risk of zoonotic disease. Scientists agree that habitat loss is positively correlated with increased zoonotic disease. This is because high biodiversity reduces the risk of zoonotic disease by the ‘Dilution Effect’. High biodiversity actually protects human health by reducing the risk of zoonotic disease.
The current human / animal relationship is unjust and unsustainable. This troubled relationship with animals keeps humanity at risk of zoonotic outbreaks, directly resulting from exploitation of animals and the environment we share with them. There is no way to humanely and safely confine and exploit animals. This has not worked. The United Nations recommendation of stricter regulations of live markets, the UN Universal Declaration of Animal Welfare, andglobal investigations have not been effective in solving the problem. What is needed is a radical, comprehensive approach.
Exploited animals are innocent individuals who suffer the loss of their children, violation of their bodies, experience fear and pain, are tortured and murdered with impunity, and have absolutely no recourse. Their exploitation is an unjust war on the defenseless. Their lives are calling out for justice, and we are experiencing a portion of that justice now. The full force of justice – an even worse pandemic, which can happen – will be even more devastating than Covid-19! It is time to take positive action!
The human species will not experience peace or real safety while continuing to exploit and degrade other species. Everyone deserves justice, and ‘a place at the table’ regardless of species. ‘No one left behind’ should apply to everyone on planet Earth, not just to one species. There needs to be a radical, comprehensive approach:
United Nations Convention Against Speciesism.
Stephen S. Morse et al, Zoonoses, The Lancet; Zoonotic Diseases, CDC; WHO/FAO/OIE Report of the Joint Consultation on Emerging Zoonotic Diseases; Aysha Akhtar, Animals and Public Health Why Treating Animals Better is Critical To Human Welfare; Center of the Deadly Coronavirus Outbreak, Time Magazine; WHO, H5N1 Avian Influenza: Time-line of major events.
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