On the 31 of December 2019, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) County Office in China became aware of a media statement published by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission. The statement, posted to the Commission’s website, reported on a cluster of cases of what seemed to be “viral pneumonia” proliferating in the city of Wuhan.
The WHO was not the only interested party in these cases of “pneumonia with unknown cause”, the curiosity of several health authorities around the world was also piqued. Could this be the beginnings of a new viral outbreak? Perhaps something like SARS in 2003? Or the much more infectious but less deadly H1N1 “swine” flu that spread throughout the world in 2009? More information was clearly necessary, but assuming the worst case scenario was in the best interest of global health. It was vital to get ahead of the curve in case the worse should happen.
The following day, January 1 2020, the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market — a wet market in the Hubei provenance of Wuhan thought to be the epicentre of this potential new virus — was shut down until further investigations could take place.
At the time of writing this article (November 2020), SARS-COV-19 — responsible for the initial reports of “pneumonia with unknown cause” — has claimed the lives of over 1.3 million human beings worldwide, with no end currently in sight. Many countries are now experiencing second and third waves of outbreaks; hospitals are overwhelmed by the lack of support and adequate equipment in place for them to help the masses of people becoming infected.
Life for most of us has been put on hold since March. We remain in a perpetual state of unknowing, experiencing something none of us could have predicted, and wondering when we can go back to “normal” — whatever that may now be. We’re all asking questions: how did it come to this? What went wrong, and could it have been prevented? How likely is it that a pandemic such as this could happen again?
Though many different factors aligned to engender this novel coronavirus, one major element — the same element, in fact, that has been a constant in almost every viral outbreak that has plagued humanity in the last 10,000 years — is our exploitation of animals. If we chose to expunge animal exploitation in all its myriad forms then the chance of a pandemic like the one we’re experiencing now could be drastically reduced, if not nullified entirely. The onus to make sure something like COVID-19 does not occur again lies solely with us.
If you read nothing further, let this be your one takeaway from the article: speaking about a recent report undertaken by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) regarding zoonoses, the organisation’s executive director Inger Andersen said: “The science is clear that if we keep exploiting wildlife and destroying our ecosystems, then we can expect to see a steady stream of these diseases jumping from animals to humans in the years ahead.”
Where we came from
The domestication process of animals most familiar to us today began anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 years ago. This was due in large part to the emergence of agriculture and permanent human settlements. These animals fall into one or more of the three main domestication categories: animals domesticated for companionship (dogs, cats); food and clothing (cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys); or work (horses, donkeys, camels, sled dogs.)
Along with their friendship, their work, and their flesh, we got something else we didn’t bargain for. It took a while before this other made itself known, but when it eventually reared its indiscernible head up and sank its poison into our species, it made sure it was impossible to shake off. When we talk about the domestication of animals we are also talking about the domestication of their diseases. Before recent centuries it is reasonable to assume no one got the “common” cold except for the one species it was actually common to: camels. It is hard to imagine a wild camel getting the opportunity to sneeze into a person’s face before we began using them for transport.
Influenza, possibly ground zero for our relationship to zoonotic spillover, has been with us for thousands of years. The first recorded epidemic in modern history, an outbreak occurring in 1200 BC Babylon, is thought to have been an influenza epidemic — though knowing for sure is nearly impossible. It is worth noting, however, that the only surviving major literary work composed in Babylonia from 1000–700 BC has as its central actor Erra, the God of Plague and Mayhem.
For anyone unfamiliar with the term, a zoonotic spillover occurs when infectious pathogens are passed from non-human animals to humans. We domesticated pigs and got whooping cough. Waterfowl, influenza. Lyme disease, in a roundabout way, from our relationship to deer. The AIDS-causing viruses HIV-1 and HIV-2 likely spilled over from the hunting, butchering, and eating of either chimpanzees or the sooty mangabey monkeys in the Congo.
During the ruling of the Roman Empire we see the destruction wrought by another likely zoonotic spillover: the Antione Plague. Ancient sources agree that this plague, thought to be either smallpox or measles, first appeared during the Roman siege of the Mesopotamian city Seleucia and spread rapidly westward. The plague of Antione killed between five to ten million people out of a global population somewhere between 200 to 250 million.
Measles, a member of the genus Morbillivirus, is closely related to rinderpest virus (RPV) — a pathogen of cattle. From a paper published by Virology Journal on the relationship between human measles and cattle’s RPV: “[Measles] is assumed to have evolved in an environment where cattle and humans lived in close proximity. [The virus] probably evolved after commencement of livestock farming in the early centers of civilization in the Middle East.”
The deadliest outbreak in recent history — the 1918 pandemic (or H1N1) which claimed the lives of anywhere between 20 to 50 million people and infected more than a third of the world’s population — is thought to have originated from a Kansas chicken farm. The virus had genes of avian origin and was first identified in military personal in the trenches of warfare. Those cold, densely packed dank trenches became a prefect breeding ground for the virus where it could spread at an alarming rate. H1N1 would eventually garner a mortality rate of 2.5%.
In the 1990s a new outbreak fear swept the United Kingdom: BSE, or Mad Cow Disease. This disease was first discovered in cattle raised for beef in 1986 and, in 1993, almost 1,000 new cases were occurring per week. The disease, which takes hold of the cow’s brain causing it to be uncoordinated, nervous, and aggressive (hence “mad cow”), is caught by essentially turning these naturally herbivorous animals into carnivorous cannibals through feeding them cow and sheep processed remains in their food pellets. Over four million cows were slaughtered in the process of trying to control the outbreak.
BSE is not limited strictly to bovine, however. It can easily make the leap to humans, known to us as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (or vCJD), which is a fatal condition. It’s linked to eating BSE-contaminated meat or bone meal, but there is reason to assume there are other ways one could theoretically catch it. Because cow by-products are so prevalent in our society — beef jelly in pastry, tallow in creams, ointments, even toothpaste — there are concerns these items could be another pathway for vCJD to get into humans. It progressively attacks the brain, but, perhaps most terrifyingly, can remain dormant for decades. It is estimated that 1 in 2,000 people in the UK are carriers. As of 2019, 232 people worldwide are known to have become sick with vCJD: all of them have died.
The first fifth of the 21st century has given us major viral outbreaks of SARS (2003), H1N1 swine flu (2009), and COVID-19 (2019), along with many smaller pockets of viruses and diseases such as Ebola, Zika, Nipah, yellow fever, and Dengue fever popping up every so often. It is important to note that while not all of these outbreaks are a direct cause-and-effect of our relationship to non-human animals, the overwhelming majority are.
With three deadly viral outbreaks occurring in rapid succession during the last 17 years — and with the possibility of many more lying in wait due to devastating factory farming conditions — what we are currently living through may, in time, come to be known as the Age of the Pandemic.
Where we are
The use of the term “wet market” can denote two things. One: it tells the visitor it’s a marketplace which sells perishable goods such as fresh meat, seafood, and produce. This distinguishes it from a dry market, which will instead sell durable goods like fabric. Not all wet markets sell exotic wildlife, but some do. These are the most dangerous as faeces, urine, and blood of multiple species will mix together in a place where humans congregate — i.e, the risk of an unknown pathogen never before exposed to us has the opportunity to spill over.
Two: live animals will be slaughtered on site by vendors after customer purchase. The wet market may get its name from the river of blood flowing between stalls. The market thought to be where COVID-19 first spilled over sold animals for slaughter such as wolf pups, foxes, snakes, and bamboo rats. It is thought pangolins — the animal it seems most likely acted as an “intermediary host” for COVID-19’s passing to humans — were sold here too, though pangolins have not been officially listed as one of the animals available for purchase at the Wuhan wet market. This omission is perhaps because it is illegal to trade pangolin.
So far two major outbreaks — SARS, COVID-19 — have been directly related to the conditions found in places such as those listed above. The close contact between humans and non-human animals reared for food at these wet markets allows ample opportunity for the transmission of many infectious microbes to be passed over. It is without question in the importance of global health and safety that places such as these should no longer be allowed to house animals in such wretched conditions. The chance of a virus emerging, amplifying, and disseminating itself with pandemic potential is greatly exacerbated in these bacterium-infested hot-houses. So why does it continue?
“The answer to this is simple,” says Viva! Head of Communications Roisin McAuley, “ — profit.” All forms of factory farming are, she explains, “an intensive form of animal agriculture which prioritises profit above everything else. This means that animals are kept in cramped, overcrowded conditions with a lack of environmental enrichment, poor hygiene standards and low animal welfare.”
But, McAuley adds, “The wildlife trade and wet markets in China aren’t the only ones to blame for the COVID-19 outbreak. The issue here is much wider than that — our global consumption and exploitation of animals lies at the heart of future pandemic threats and so we must end factory farming altogether.
“Intensive farming allows viruses and bacteria to easily spread and mutate in densely populated farms. As factory farming spreads across the globe, diseases follow, spreading like wildfire through the overcrowded sheds. Ninety per cent of farmed animals across the world are now kept in factory farms. Animals kept in horrific conditions are more susceptible to disease due to the extreme stress they experience from their cramped and inhumane surroundings. Bred for fast growth, their immunity is low. It’s a perfect storm of our own making. […] Transmission from animals to humans is so commonplace that three in four of the world’s new or emerging infectious diseases come from animals.”
The unhygienic and crowded environments found in places like factory farms, like the wildlife-trading wet markets of China, severely increase the risk of an infectious spillover occurring. This is unquestionable. So, is it reasonable to assume bodies of authority such as the Chinese government may permanently place a ban on such conditions, drastically cutting down the risk of a future pandemic?
The abolition of animal trade in wet markets is something the Chinese government has actually done before, albeit only temporarily. In 1997 a severe case of bird flu poured through the Hong Kong region; entire populations of poultry were culled in an attempt to halt the spread of the virus. Bans on market trade of wildlife soon after the SARS and COVID-19 viruses emerged were briefly put into place. In the case of SARS, China went after the civet cat, placing the blame at the paws of this weasel-like animal. Tens of thousands of civets had their lives taken from them via drowning or electrocution.
The restriction on the hunting and butchering of wild animals stayed in place for three months during the epidemic. Then, The National Forestry and Grassland Administration — responsible for the welfare and management of China’s forestry affairs — announced that 54 types of wild animal (including civet cats) were back on the menu.
In February 2020 the Chinese government once again took steps to implement restrictions in the trading of wildlife. In the coming months there is expected to be an updated version of the country’s Wildlife Protection Law and an amended Animal Epidemic Prevention Law, as well as a new Biosecurity Law. However, these updates only cover the trading of land animals and does nothing to address potential threats coming from fur farms and the traditional Chinese medical industry, which is heavily reliant on wildlife farming. How successful these laws will be and for how long they will remain in place — assuming they get implemented — is anyone’s guess.
The topic of fur farming is a particularly poignant one. During the research for this article news broke about a newly discovered mutated form of coronavirus found on a Danish fur farm. This new mutation can be spread to humans via mink; the nation quickly enacted plans to kill their entire population of the animal, which numbers around 17 million. Denmark — the world’s largest producer of mink fur — joins five other nations who have now reported coronavirus outbreaks at mink farms, including the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and the US. The Danish government has since admitted that their order of the mass cull has no legal basis — Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen went so far as to apologise on Tuesday 10 November for issuing an order to kill every mink in the country.
“The [minks] are packed in tightly and live miserable lives full of pain and suffering — all so that humans can wear their fur as a completely useless fashion accessory,” McAuley criticizes. “Although we can each take individual action against these cruel industries, we also must have the support from governments. They play a vital role in aiding the transition away from animal exploitation towards more sustainable, ethical industries.”
Prime Minister Frederiksen has not ruled out a future mass cull.
The reason why the Danish government’s reaction to the news from the country’s fur farms appeared so impulsive was because mutated forms of coronavirus can cause vaccines to be less effective. As different drug companies around the world race to find a vaccine against SARS-COV-19, the next pandemic could be just around the corner, rendering their COVID-19 vaccine potentially useless. As long as we continue to pile animals in cramped, unsanitary spaces, allowing the perfect petri-dish conditions for disease to form, amplify, spread — we are essentially fixing a hangnail by chain sawing off our foot: we are doing nothing to make things better in the long run.
Where we’re going
The 1918 flu strain had a mortality rate of 2.5% and caused the deaths of tens of millions of people worldwide. COVID-19 currently has a mortality rate of around 0.5%, though with time this number could change. Another strain of bird flu — H7N9 — has an expected mortality rate of 20 to 30%. Meaning, of all the people who become infected with this virus, 20 to 30% will likely succumb. If this strain became a pandemic, what we would be looking at is a world in which hundreds of millions, if not billions of human beings are falling dead. H5N1 goes even further: this strain can have a mortality rate of 60%. COVID-19 has run our health organisations ragged. Imagining the scale of carnage a H5N1 or H7N9 pandemic could cause is a terrifying scenario — but it is one worth thinking about.
Having a named and known disease to study makes things a little easier for health authorities. We may not understand the true scale of destruction something like H7N9 could cause on a mass scale, but at least we know it’s out there and can take preventative measures against stopping its spread. With the likes of a “Disease X”, however, those already murky waters become enveloped by darkness entirely.
Disease X is the mysterious name given to unknown pathogens health organisations say could pose a severe threat to global human health. The WHO updates their virus list each year of diseases requiring the most attention due to how likely they are to cause the next deadly pandemic. On their website they list: COVID-19, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease, Lassa fever, MERS/SARS, Nipah and henipaviral diseases, Rift Valley fever, Zika, and that great unknown — Disease X.
Because Disease X remains an outlier, even our best guesses may be way off for predicting exactly what it can do. We simply don’t know what kind of disease it would be or where it would come from — East or West. It’s difficult to prepare yourself against an attack from an enemy while blind and deaf to its whereabouts. And all this is not even to mention the possibility of superbugs.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria is a growing concern for scientists the world over. The World Health Organisation has labelled it as a major threat to global health, food safety, and development. We are making fairly common ailments like pneumonia, blood poisoning, gonorrhoea, and foodborne diseases harder — sometimes impossible — to treat, as the antibiotics we use become less effective from over-prescription. By 2050, superbugs could be expected to kill 10 million people each year.
What we now think of as relatively straight forward medical procedures — such as a tooth extraction, fixing a broken bone, or childbirth — may in future decades become a life-threatening operation. In the case of dentistry the infection of oral tissues can result in cellulitis and septicaemia — potentially life threatening issues without the use of effective antibiotics. During live-births and C-sections the mortality rates of mothers and/or infants suffering from bacterial infections would greatly increase. We simply wouldn’t have a way to treat them.
But what does all this have to do with animal farming? Because of the harsh, unsanitary conditions they’re forced to live in, the majority of the world’s antibiotics are given to animals used in factory farming to make them grow faster and survive in the otherwise deathly environment. In the US in 2015, more than 70% of antibiotics vital for human medical use were given to factory farmed animals instead. Excessive and inappropriate use of these drugs is becoming a concerning problem for us all.
A rising global population will likely mean an increasing demand for meat. As corporations struggle to meet the new requirements we will see more factory farms with ever more densely packed animals. More animals will mean more antibiotics to halt the pernicious effects of living in these diseased warehouses. More animals will mean more opportunity for spillover, pandemics. In the wild if a virus kills its host before it can spread, it has failed; it goes nowhere. Not so in the case of factory farming where the next beak is mere inches away. More factory farming means more climate change. More animals in these farms will mean further habitat destruction — we have to put them somewhere, after all. Encroachment into lands occupied by wildlife will force the wildlife to move elsewhere — perhaps this will be into human settlements — which could potentially take us one step closer to that ever worrisome Disease X outbreak.
Halting population growth or reversing climate change is not something we can realistically do. What we can do, however, is alter our eating habits and farming practices. Viva! is trying to help people realise the potential for change their forks and knives have. “We recently launched a new 7-day vegan meal plan called V7,” McAuley says, “which is designed to help people make the transition to veganism. Each day, you get three simple and delicious recipes as well as a complete vegan shopping list and lots of vegan tips. If you know anyone who wants to start their vegan journey, they can sign up to V7 at 7dayvegan.viva.org.uk.”
McAuley knows governmental support is also necessary for organisations who are aiming to get more sustainable food practises into the mainstream. “Viva! is currently lobbying the UK government to End Factory Farming with an open letter to Boris Johnson. We are calling on the government to support plant-based food initiatives and transform our food system. We currently have 10,000 signatures and counting. […] Through our open letter, national media coverage, and nationwide demos — with support from MPs — we are putting pressure on the government to change.”
If this is something you want to put your name to, you can sign Viva!’s open letter here.
One of humanity’s greatest concerns right now should be on bringing plant agriculture to the masses. This is particularly important in environments where bushmeat is the only option for starving families. COVID-19 is a taste of what is waiting for us if we do not treat our planet better. If we do not soon start to drastically shift our eating habits, it is more a case of “when”, rather than “if”, the next outbreak will occur. Simply put: raising animals for food has the capability to annihilate human beings on a bewildering scale. The switch to sustainable plant-based food alternatives cannot come soon enough.
