Mar 24, 2020 at 2:44 PM
Subject:
To:
While shutting down wet markets in China slowed the spread of COVID-19, it
is not enough to prevent future disease outbreaks.
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Coronavirus Should Make You Reconsider Eating Meat
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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
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meat
as the average Chinese person. With 99 percent of farmed animals
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in the United States living on factory farms, the odds of another zoonotic
outbreak are high.

Intensive farming conditions are breeding grounds for disease
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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
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The
Spanish Flu infected one-third of the world’s population
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and killed at least 50 million people worldwide.
*A Short History of Zoonotic Disease*
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– *1989: *HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was likely spread to humans
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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
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.

– *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
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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
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.

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*
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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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