Is Next Pandemic on Our Plate? Meat-Eating May Unleash Unknown Viruses
Demand for regular supplies of affordable meat will create future pandemics that will make Covid-19 pandemic look like a “dress rehearsal", scientists are warning. Producing meat is creating the perfect breeding ground for diseases of the same kind to emerge, according to the South African academics. The risk is created by humans’ interactions with animals and a lack of learning from the past, they say. The coronavirus pandemic, many of the early cases of which were linked to a live-animal-slaughter market in China, has killed around 2.2 million people worldwide in a year. Experts from both the UN and the European Food Safety Authority have previously identified industrial animal farming as the cause of most new infectious diseases in humans in the past decade, and have likewise warned it risks starting new pandemics. Zoonotic diseases - those that jump from animals to humans - have become four times as frequent in the past 50 years. Animals kept in close confinement, either in street markets or intensive farming, are susceptible to disease because the stress of the conditions and even the sight of others being slaughtered weakens their immune systems, experts say.
Is Next Pandemic on Our Plate? Meat-Eating May Unleash Unknown Viruses
Demand for regular supplies of affordable meat will create future pandemics that will make Covid-19 pandemic look like a “dress rehearsal", scientists are warning. Producing meat is creating the perfect breeding ground for diseases of the same kind to emerge, according to the South African academics. The risk is created by humans’ interactions with animals and a lack of learning from the past, they say. The coronavirus pandemic, many of the early cases of which were linked to a live-animal-slaughter market in China, has killed around 2.2 million people worldwide in a year. Experts from both the UN and the European Food Safety Authority have previously identified industrial animal farming as the cause of most new infectious diseases in humans in the past decade, and have likewise warned it risks starting new pandemics. Zoonotic diseases - those that jump from animals to humans - have become four times as frequent in the past 50 years. Animals kept in close confinement, either in street markets or intensive farming, are susceptible to disease because the stress of the conditions and even the sight of others being slaughtered weakens their immune systems, experts say.