What if we told you that there is a simple way for humanity to slash climate-warming emissions, help prevent the next pandemic, and simultaneously eradicate one of the most significant moral atrocities of our time — one that nearly all of us bear some responsibility for?
We’re talking, of course, about factory farming. In 2024, it’s hardly a secret that the billions of animals raised for food are treated abysmally. They are, to name just a few standard industry practices, caged, mutilated without pain relief, and intensively bred to the point that they live in chronic pain and even struggle to stand up, before being slaughtered, often painfully.
The sheer scale of this system defies comprehension. Every year, humans kill 80 billion land animals — 10 times more than there are people on Earth — and an even larger, poorly tracked number of fish.
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Yet factory farming is only expanding its reach around the globe, despite decades of animal advocacy striving to stop it, because it’s the most efficient way to produce lots of meat for a world of 8 billion people.
We think there’s a better way. This week, Future Perfect is publishing How Factory Farming Ends, a package of stories on the past and future of the movement against factory farming; its struggle to change our culture, politics, and palates; and how it might yet make real progress. This series is supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which received a grant from Builders Initiative.
Some stories delve into the animal rights movement’s fraught relationship with the climate and public health communities, and the prospects for building meaningful coalitions. Others scrutinize the animal rights movement from its 19th-century glory days, when vegetarianism was popular among utopian social reformers, to its present-day alienation from other progressive causes, to the messy, often maddening but essential legacy of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
The world is currently seeing the fastest-spreading, largest-ever outbreak of H5N1, a highly contagious, deadly strain of avian influenza. Scientists say this virus now presents an existential threat to the world’s biodiversity, with the risk to humans rising as it continues to leap the species barrier, reaching new host species.
H5N1 has already impacted at least 485 bird species and 48 mammal species, killing seals, sea otters, dolphins, foxes, California condors, albatrosses, bald eagles, cougars, polar bears and a zoo tiger. Since it broke out in Europe in 2020, this virus has spread globally. Carried by birds along migratory pathways, it has invaded six continents, including Antarctica.
This current H5N1 animal pandemic (or panzootic) was caused by humans: A mild form of avian flu carried by wild birds turned deadly when it infected domestic poultry. Many industrial-scale poultry farms adjoin wetlands where migrating birds congregate, facilitating rapid spread.
The toll on some bird and mammal populations has been devastating. With continued outbreaks, some imperiled species could be pushed to the brink, with wildlife already fighting to survive against a changing climate, disappearing habitat and other stressors.
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Brown skuas and south polar skuas, two gull-like species that nest in Antarctica, are sometimes called the “pirates of the Southern seas.” These migratory seabirds are fierce, competitive predators that hunt or scavenge anything, from eggs and adult birds to seafood, mammals or garbage.
“They’re really tough animals — and they’re dying,” says Antonio Quesada, director of the Spanish Polar Committee.
He gravely recounts why this season’s field work in the Antarctic was like no other: A lethal strain of avian flu, H5N1, breached this fragile ecosystem in February. Only a handful of specially trained researchers were allowed onshore in outbreak sites, garbed in hazmat suits to prevent contagion and spread.
Quesada has rarely seen a single dead skua in 20 years’ work in Antarctica. “They’re an indicator species. If they’re dying, what does it mean for other birds?” he asks.
The threat posed by H5N1 extends far beyond the frozen South. Few people realize that the world is currently gripped in another serious pandemic — or, to be exact, a panzootic, the animal equivalent. This virus has now infected more than 500 bird and mammal species.
Since it emerged in 2020 in Europe, this “Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)” strain has blazed a trail of death across the planet, the largest outbreak in history. The virus is both lethal and unusually transmissible, jumping between birds, mammals and livestock with frightening agility.
Meanwhile, it continues to devastate wildlife, including many endangered animals, says Chris Walzer, executive director of health at the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society. As of March, H5N1 had leapt the species barrier to infect some 485 types of bird and at least 48 mammal species, according to United Nations estimates. Many of these species had never been diagnosed with avian influenza before.
The disease has infiltrated even the most remote regions on six continents. When a polar bear in Alaska succumbed in 2023, it marked the first detected mammal death from avian flu in the Arctic. Thus far, only Australia and the Pacific Islands have been spared. And the virus is still on the move, spreading to new hosts as it evolves and picks up genes from other bird flu strains.
H5N1 has been carried worldwide by migrating birds. But new research shows that this current strain (dubbed clade 2.3.4.4b) can now spread directly between mammals, with frightening implications. It seems that “H5N1 viruses are becoming more evolutionarily flexible and adapting to mammals in new ways,” the study’s authors write, which “could have global consequences for wildlife, humans, and/or livestock.”
Walzer warns, “H5N1 now presents an existential threat to the world’s biodiversity.”
It’s important to understand that this panzootic “is a man-made problem,” says Vincent Munster, who heads the Virus Ecology Section at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Avian flu is not uncommon in wild birds, particularly in its natural hosts: ducks, geese, gulls, terns, swans and other waterfowl. They carry a low pathogenic form, a mild virus that may be asymptomatic. It spreads seasonally, when multiple species congregate at migration stopover sites or cluster together to nest.
But when avian flu spills over into poultry, it can morph into a highly contagious, fatal virus.
The current panzootic began when this H5N1 strain jumped from domestic poultry back into wild birds — which happened because of modern livestock production methods. Humans further facilitated spillover by destroying wetlands, which crowds migrating birds into small scraps of habitat, often with poultry farms nearby.
When farms encroach wetlands, it creates the perfect interface for this type of virus, Walzer says. It’s a veritable petri dish of opportunity for avian flu to swap genes and mutate into potentially more virulent or transmissible strains. This environment allowed the virus to infect chickens, geese and ducks –– and jump back into the wild in a virulent form.
“The emergence of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza is a direct result of commercial, large-scale poultry farming,” Munster says. There are more than 34 billion chickens on Earth, according to Food and Agriculture Organization estimates.
The U.S. Delmarva Peninsula offers a prime example of farm-wetland overlap. It’s both a migratory stopover and a wintering ground along the North American flyway on the nation’s Mid-Atlantic coast. It’s also the site of a $4.4 billion poultry industry that raised 600 million chickens in 2023. H5N1 has hit there — and across the globe. In Cambodia, for example, farmers that raise their ducks and geese in wetlands have also seen outbreaks.
The virus is now spreading among cows, infecting at least 171 herds in 13 U.S. states. It thrives in udder cells, and RNA from H5N1 has been found in milk.
Another serious concern: H5N1 has not petered out between spring and fall migrations, like avian flu normally does. It’s now endemic in Europe and North America. When that happened, Walzer says, “people began worrying that it’s not going to go away anymore.”
It has flared for four years straight now, with wild birds currently carriers, reservoir hosts and victims of the virus.
Next came a “viral chatter” phase. Viruses don’t just break through species barriers. As they change, they make periodic forays into other species, sometimes over years. In most cases, these ventures are unsuccessful. Unless a virus can enter cells and replicate, it circulates harmlessly.
Flu viruses mutate rapidly as they acquire genes from other viruses: mixing, matching, reassorting and adapting, says Colin Ross Parrish, a virologist at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Each genetic mutation creates a new building block for evolution: Genetic sequences are cellular instructions. They help a virus evade immunity in a host, determine how it causes infection, how it spreads and much more.
Avian influenza’s eight-section genome offers numerous opportunities to reassort its genetics, not unlike a Las Vegas slot machine –– and in 2003, it hit a viral jackpot. Avian flu mutated to successfully spill back from poultry into wild birds, launching the current panzootic.
Fast forward to 2020 when H5N1 appeared in its current form in European birds and then successfully infiltrated new species, including mammals. It quickly spread to Africa and the Middle East, as it was carried long distances along migratory flyways. Humans helped by selling and shipping infected poultry across national borders.
The virus crossed the Atlantic, reaching U.S. and Canadian shores in late 2021. Soon, mallards and swans were dying in the U.S. Midwest, bald eagles died nationwide, seals perished in Maine, as did bobcats in Wisconsin and raccoons in Washington and Michigan, to name just a few of the many losses.
The virus then aggressively invaded South America, targeting birds and sea mammals. Genetic studies on dead seabirds, a dolphin and a sea lion in Peru shed light on H5N1’s movement and adaptations. Researchers discovered that in the U.S., the Eurasian strain added genes; in this form, it expanded its repertoire of hosts and raged like wildfire through large seal and sea lion colonies.
H5N1 finally reached both poles. Outbreaks continue to arise nearly everywhere.
This colorized electron microscope image shows avian influenza (H5N1) virus particles (red/yellow) grown in Madin-Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) epithelial cells. Image courtesy of CDC and NIAID.H5N1 was first detected in South America in 2022. Arrows show the timeline of its spread and orange circles show wild bird infections; green triangles, domestic birds; and blue squares, mammals. Significant events of the avian and marine mammal clade viruses are represented in dark orange and dark blue, respectively. Dark yellow represents incidental avian hosts. Image Courtesy bioRxiv/Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Portrait of a global killer
Proximity is a big factor in how viruses spread, as the world learned during the COVID pandemic. Sharing a home or gathering in large groups poses a huge H5N1 risk, says Amandine Gamble, an infectious disease ecology expert at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. To understand where birds go and how they spread H5N1, she is collecting genetic material from various species in the Falkland Islands and outfitting them with tracking devices to follow their movements.
Regardless of the location, the virus triggers a systemic infection in birds. They may become lethargic, sneezing, coughing, gasping for air or experiencing intestinal issues. The virus also invades the brain. Sick birds may become disoriented, uncoordinated, stumbling, swimming or walking in circles, trembling or jerking their necks before keeling over dead. Some suddenly die without showing any sign of illness. Survivors may pass the virus to others.
Mammals experience many of the same symptoms as birds, but postmortems have also revealed pneumonia and bleeding in the heart, liver and other organs. Autopsies of 55 mammals showed that the most commonly afflicted part of the brain was the frontal lobe, which explains the movement and cognitive symptoms.
The genie is out of the bottle, says Waltzer. He emphasizes that the length of the outbreak, as well as the amount of the virus in the environment, is unprecedented. “The sheer global distribution of this virus,” he notes, “is underestimated everywhere — as well as the breadth of ecosystems that are being impacted.”
Researchers are deeply concerned by the effects of this red-alert virus: “High pathogenicity H5N1 is a real, tangible threat to wildlife, of a magnitude and scale never seen before,” says Marcela Uhart, who heads the Latin American program at the University of California Davis’ One Health Institute.
On a United Nations situation update map, swaths of the world seem untouched, but that is likely because some regions have little or no monitoring for avian influenza, Walzer notes. For example, experts suspect there is vast underreporting in Africa. Many countries have slim resources, so pathogen hunters target the deadliest human threats: malaria. Ebola, Lassa fever and other infectious diseases.
Many pathogens, including avian influenza, are zoonotic: They jump between wildlife, livestock and humans. In recent decades, zoonotic diseases have emerged and spread at accelerating rates. They are frequently fatal and have no cure.
As humanity encroaches on wild areas, people, livestock and wildlife come into into unnatural proximity, exposing all to germs they have no immunity to — like avian influenza –– and leave wild animals with ever-shrinking habitat. Add poaching for the illegal wildlife trade, bushmeat hunting, and rapidly changing climate, and it’s no surprise that many species are in serious danger of extinction.
H5N1 is the newest threat. “The number of different species being infected is quite profound,” says Emily Denstedt, a health program adviser with the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Wild birds are among the most affected animals. This is a major change: previous H5N1 strains primarily attacked poultry. At least 485 bird species from 25 classifications have been infected, including puffins, pelicans peregrine falcons, owls, toucans, parrots, bald eagles, warblers, finches and many others.
However, seabirds are by far the hardest hit. H5N1 “super-spreader” events in the U.K. offer sobering examples of the carnage wrought by this virus, though there’s no way to accurately count the casualties.
Nesting colonies are now notably emptier in many locations. In Scotland — home to 60% of the world’s great skuas — breeding numbers have plummeted by three-quarters since 2021. Some 16,000 gannets died and the population in Wales dipped to precarious lows not seen since the 1960s. Rangers discovered more than 660 dead Arctic tern chicks in England.
Mass mortality, clinical signs and post-mortem findings of elephant seals at Punta Delgada Península Valdés, Argentina, during an outbreak of H5N1 HPAI. — Hundreds of elephant seal pup carcasses accumulated along the high tide line of the beach at Punta Delgada. B) A pup presenting with labored breathing and foamy nasal discharge. C) Pup presenting with open mouth breathing and tremors/twitching. D) Abundant white foam on the snout and E) draining from the trachea of a dead pup. F) Markedly heterogeneous and congested lung surface in a dead pup. G) Bloody and mucous nasal discharge in a dead subadult male. Image courtesy bioRxiv/Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
In the U.S., the virus struck Lake Michigan’s Caspian terns, killing 62%. In early 2023, pelicans littered Peruvian beaches; more than 40% of the population died. At least 20 critically endangered California condors perished in Arizona, endangering their perilous recovery from just 22 birds in 1987.
So far, seals and sea lions are the only mammals dying en masse. However, the sheer number of affected mammals is worrying, ranging from grizzly bears, lions, pika, cougars, cows and dolphins to domestic dogs and cats, racoons, foxes, sea otters and a zoo tiger. Six dead walruses were discovered in Svalbard in 2023, some 965 kilometers (600 miles) from the Arctic Circle.
Uhart explains the broader collateral damage: All species play a role in maintaining healthy ecosystems, and big losses reverberate throughout the entire community. She offers pinnipeds as an example. As top predators, seals, sea lions and walruses keep prey species in check. Without them, previously constrained species multiply, may expand their ranges and displace other animals.
“We almost wiped out pinnipeds in the past, hunting them for their fur and their blubber, and they are only now recovering after years of protection,” Uhart says. “We can’t let a disease put them at risk again.”
There may be other, less obvious effects on wildlife. Birds that sicken and survive probably won’t fledge young, Munster says, and birds that breed in large colonies may not thrive in smaller groups. Walzer notes that we humans and our monitoring systems are really bad at detecting these more subtle decreases in populations, “And suddenly, they’re gone.”
Dr. Stefan. Ekernas, the director of field conservation with the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance, reacts to the wolf sighting on a Colorado Corridors Project camera last month.
According to CPW, this agreement has been rescinded. Joseph Livingston, statewide public information officer for CPW, confirmed that the offer was rescinded.
Livingston said while the offer is off the table, CPW is hopeful to continue to work with the tribe in the future and does not close the door to future conversations about reintroduction.
“Naturally, the decision made by the Colville Business Council and the Tribal Government and Natural Resources Committees is disappointing, but we have a strong relationship with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and hope to continue these conversations in the future,” said CPW Director Jeff Davis. “We will continue working with other potential sources for wolves to further our efforts to restore wolves to Colorado. We are not contemplating halting our implementation of the plan and will continue in our efforts to restore a sustainable population of wolves to the state while avoiding and minimizing impacts to our critically important agricultural industries and rural communities.”
When asked what caused this change, CPW said it had to do with tribal relations.
“The council and the Tribal Government and Natural Resources Committees expressed some concerns regarding tribal relations that we will continue addressing with the Tribe, and we have every expectation that we can and will move forward together to maintain and grow our tribal relationships inside and outside of Colorado,” said Livingston.
Scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), USA, have detected H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) in cattle and milk samples collected from two dairy farms in Texas.
The study, which is currently available on the medRxivpreprint* server, highlights the need to develop effective interventions against H5N1 HPAIV to prevent pathogen spillover.
Image Credit: McKenzie Kizer / Shutterstock
Background
*Important notice: medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza A viruses (HPAIV) have caused millions of deaths in wild birds and poultry across the world. Recently, these viruses have been identified in many animal species, with HPAIV H5N1 HA clade 2.3.3.4b being the most predominant type in these spillover events.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has recently detected H5N1 HPAIV infection in 172 cattle farms in 13 states. Four dairy farm and nine poultry farm workers have also been suspected to have these infections recently.
Considering the seriousness of the situation, the current study was designed to investigate the presence of novel respiratory viruses in two Texas dairy farms.
Study design
The study was conducted in two dairy farms in Texas, where H5N1 HPAIV infection was recently detected in cattle. The farm owners invited the scientists to investigate, as they had a research proposal to study novel respiratory viruses in livestock farms in the United States and Mexico.
A total of 17 farm workers were recruited in the study. They provided nasopharyngeal and serum samples for the analysis. Five out of 17 workers reported experiencing respiratory illnesses and using different medications for the condition.
From both farms, a total of 39 cattle nasal swab samples and 14 milk samples were collected for molecular assays, cell and egg culture, and Sanger and next-generation sequencing to isolate and characterize respiratory viruses.
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Three-hour bioaerosol samples were also collected from different farm regions to investigate the presence of novel viruses in the environment.
Important observations
The study detected H5N1 HPAIV in nine of 14 milk samples and one of 39 cattle nasal swab samples. However, none of the nasopharyngeal swabs collected from farm workers tested positive for influenza A viruses and coronaviruses.
One nasal swab collected from a sick cow showed the presence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
Among 14 serum samples collected from farm workers, two showed elevated levels of neutralizing antibodies against a recombinant influenza A H5N1 virus.
Among 24 bioaerosol samples collected from both farms, none showed molecular evidence of influenza A and coronaviruses.
H5N1-positive milk samples were further analyzed using Sanger sequencing and next-generation sequencing for viral characterization. The findings revealed that viruses are closely related to other recent Texas epizootic H5N1 strains of clade 2.3.4.4b.
The mutational analysis revealed the presence of multiple common mutations across isolated viral genomes. These mutations are associated with viral virulence and propagation, host specificity shift, and drug resistance.
Study significance
The study highlights the presence of H5N1 HPAIV infections in cattle in two Texas dairy farms. Although the virus was detected only in one cattle nasal swab sample, about 64% of milk samples tested positive for H5N1 HPAIV.
These findings indicate that although the virus is rapidly cleared from the nasal tissues, infected cattle can shed H5N1 HPAIV in milk for a prolonged period of time.
Most importantly, the detection of anti-HPAIV neutralizing antibodies in farm workers highlights the possibility of previous infections that remained undetected during the acute infection phase.
This highlights the possibility of underreporting of HPAIV infections in farm workers, which can subsequently lead to large outbreaks even outside farm worker communities.
“I am very confident there are more people being infected than we know about,” senior author Gregory Gray, MD, MPH, a UTMB infectious disease researcher, told NPR. “Largely, that’s because our surveillance has been so poor.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decide whether to vaccinate farm workers against HPAIV based on surveillance data, which indicate a low prevalence of HPAIV infection.
This low prevalence is due to low testing rates among farm workers. Many infections may remain undiagnosed among people who have been exposed to sick dairy cattle.
“Maybe what we see isn’t exactly the tip of the iceberg, but it’s certainly not the whole story,” said Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Influenza at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
Studies identifying novel respiratory viruses are infrequently conducted in dairy farms because of the fear of business loss. As Gregory Gray mentioned, without collaborative efforts between the government and the livestock industry, the U.S. risks about this virus will remain in the dark.
This highlights the need for collecting more comprehensive epidemiological data necessary to design future interventions against H5N1 HPAIV on cattle farms.
Cover Image Source: Seth Rogen and wife Lauren Miller attend the 2018 MTV Movie And TV Awards at Barker Hangar on June 16, 2018, in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
Just like a Hollywood rom-com scene, it was a summer night in 2004. Screenwriter Will Reiser was attending a party with his date. This is where his friend Seth Rogen and a friend of his date, Lauren Miller, bumped into each other. Seth and Lauren liked each other so much that they ended up going on a date at 4 am that very night, eating grilled cheese sandwiches, and playing Spanish Scrabble until sunrise. Since then, they have made some bold choices in their romantic relationship, from moving in together in 2005 to deciding to “not have kids.” Seth has often been asked why they chose to remain childless. In a March 2023 episode of the “Diary of a CEO” podcast, Seth revealed the answer and people are applauding his thinking for that.
Image Source: Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen co-host the HFC Austin Brain Health Dinner on September 30, 2023, in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for Hilarity for Charity)
Speaking to host Steven Bartlett, the Golden Globes nominee said that not having children actually “helped him succeed” in Hollywood. At about 51 minutes into the podcast, Seth said, “There’s a whole huge thing I’m not doing, which is raising children.” Steven attempted to break into this thought process by saying, “But it might make you happier,” to which Seth quickly replied, “I don’t think it would.” The 40-year-old star added that he has obviously worked with a lot of children, in films like “Horton Hears a Who!” (2008), “Kung Fu Panda” (2008), “Monsters vs. Aliens” (2009), “The Simpsons” (1989) and “American Dad! “(2005). Nevertheless, he said, “Some people want kids. Some people don’t want kids.”
Image Source: Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen attend the 95th Annual Academy Awards on March 12, 2023 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images )
The Canadian-American actor explained that “a lot of people have kids even before they think about it.” Most people just seem to go through the routine process of a career followed by marriage followed by having kids. But neither Seth nor his wife were like that at any time in their relationship. They were always content not having kids. “The older we get, the happier and reaffirmed with our choice to not have kids,” Seth said, feeling relieved, “Thank God, we don’t have children.”
“We get to do whatever we want,” Seth continued. He even listed some of the things he and his wife can now do and would not have been able to if they had kids. “We are in the prime of our lives. We’re smarter than we’ve ever been. We understand ourselves more than we’ve ever had. We have the capacity to achieve the level of work and a level of communication and a level of care for one another and a lifestyle – we can live with one another,” he said before bursting into short hysterical laughter. The filmmaker reaffirmed that they are so happy they chose to remain child-free. “Me and my wife get a lot of active enjoyment out of not having kids than having kids.”
Seth’s free thinking touched the hearts of people who expressed admiration for him. A child-free woman, @ninabradshaw2267, commented that it was “really refreshing” for her to “hear someone speak about being child-free.” @mikehunthurst6953 affirmed, “Having kids is a choice, not a requirement.”
Carnivores, including coyotes, can contract H5N1 by eating infected carcasses. Image © Steve Winter.
Image Credit: McKenzie Kizer / Shutterstock
Cover Image Source: Seth Rogen and wife Lauren Miller attend the 2018 MTV Movie And TV Awards at Barker Hangar on June 16, 2018, in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
Exposing the Big Game 
