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Coronavirus Should Make You Reconsider Eating Meat
Reading Time: 4 minutes
COVID-19 is not the first zoonotic pandemic humans have encountered, and if we do not address the glaring issues within our global food system, it will not be the last. Animal exploitation has been at the root of several major pandemics throughout history. Until we address this threat, another deadly outbreak is not only probable, it’s inevitable.
Though China’s wet markets have been the focal point of COVID-19 discussions, Americans’ demand for meat presents an unspoken risk. The average American consumes twice as much meat as the average Chinese person. With 99 percent of farmed animals in the United States living on factory farms, the odds of another zoonotic outbreak are high.
Intensive farming conditions are breeding grounds for disease. Whether we are ready to admit it or not, there is no fundamental difference between the risk industrial animal agriculture and the risk wildlife trade pose to public health. Both lead to unsanitary conditions, untreated diseases, and the transmission of diseases from animal to animal, or in the case of COVID-19, from animals to humans.
Zoonotic diseases have been around for centuries. One of the most destructive zoonotic outbreaks before COVID-19 was the Spanish Flu of 1918, started by an H1N1 virus that is believed to have at least partially evolved inside poultry farms. The Spanish Flu infected one-third of the world’s population and killed at least 50 million people worldwide. |
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A Short History of Zoonotic Disease
- 1989: HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was likely spread to humans through the hunting, butchering, and consumption of HIV-infected primates in West Africa.
- 1998: The Nipah virus was spread to humans through intensively farmed pigs that were first infected by bats in Malaysia. While active, Nipah killed over half of the humans infected with the virus.
- 2003: A SARS outbreak infected over 8,000 people and cost the global economy an estimated $40 billion. Civet cats at a wildlife market in Guangdong, China were identified as the likely vector for transmission of the SARS virus to humans.
- 2009: The H1N1 swine flu epidemic, which killed upwards of 500,000 people, evolved from a strain of avian flu—or “bird flu”—that spread to humans. Earlier this month, a subtype of the bird flu virus, H5N8, was discovered on a German poultry farm.
- 2014: Ebola claimed the lives of over 13,000 humans. The virus has been traced to fruit bats and primates butchered for food.
- 2019-present: Coronavirus, which was likely passed from animals to humans in a wildlife market in China, has infected more than 378,000 people to date.
Learn more about the history of zoonotic disease |
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| Today, zoonotic diseases infect about 2.5 billion people every year. Even during unexceptional years, these pathogens kill approximately 2.4 million individuals—more than gun violence, car crashes, and drug abuse, combined. According to the CDC, 3 out of every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases found in humans come from animals.
The risk of contracting and spreading infectious diseases is not isolated to wild animal food sources like bats, camels, and salamanders; these diseases are found in cows, pigs, and chickens too. Scientists from the European Society for Clinical Virology, the European Society for Veterinary Virology, and the Society for General Microbiology warn that cattle could be the source of the next devastating outbreak.
Since COVID-19 first made global headlines in late December, China has taken some proactive steps to reduce the spread of disease, such as closing the market in which the virus is believed to have originated and banning the consumption of wild animals. But these preventative measures are not enough.
Read the full story here |
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Covering COVID-19
With the worst global pandemic we’ve seen in over a century, it’s more important than ever to make sure the truth is reported in its entirety, not just what’s convenient.
Help us share the facts during these uncertain times and make sure the world knows our species cannot survive if we continue our exploitation of the planet and nonhuman animals. |
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| Correction: Friday’s edition of Sentient Today incorrectly stated that farmed animals are pumped full of antibiotics to minimize viruses spreading. The purpose of antibiotics is to minimize the spread of bacteria, not viruses. |
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One comment
Binance Pagpaparehistro
February 16, 2025 at 10:10 pmI don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.