community
Although generally hidden from sight, in terms of illness and health, humans are firmly bound by the life of burning animals in factories.
The current outbreak of H5N1–Pantik (animal pandemic) has already broken wild bird populations and has been successfully established in other mammal species.
Industry and governments routinely criticize wild bird populations for spreading bird flu through migratory routes, but the ever-growing research organizations are increasingly challenging this position. Currently, the 2 billion chickens in a centralized system are now serving as sources of their own illness.
Global attention has been fixed on wet markets, wildlife trade and bushmeat consumption when it comes to the risk of pandemics and zoonotic diseases. We hear a lot about the need for surveillance systems, cross-sector collaboration, and the “community empowerment” that has been around for so far.
Although global health discourse has been caught up in this kind of rhetoric, the pandemic has been framed as unfortunate Inevitable, ultimately manageable Better surveillance in distant African countries and resources for poor communities are fighting on the forefront.
Pressure
This is not just an exaggeration. The much-anticipated pandemic agreement is an example, and prevention articles lack something specific prevention.
There is also the same emphasis on surveillance systems, communities and collaboration. All of these are good, but the first global treaties with tasks to prevent the pandemic are doubtlessly sparsely one of the main drivers of an emerging disease risk-intensive animal production system.
Meanwhile, H5N1, or highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), continues to rattle around factory farms in the global northern region.
If policymakers don’t care about the horrific animal welfare abuse at the heart of the globalized poultry industry, they should consider the significant risks to global public health. H5N1 is a pathogen with the potential for a true pandemic.
Still, this response was slow and reluctant – it took several months for the USDA to introduce forced cow testing before it was transported across state boundaries and only after mountain pressure from public health experts.
Political
But this is nothing new. During the outbreak of bovine plaque encephalopathy and mad cow disease, British farmers raised zeros of other animals (including cattle brain and spinal cord tissue) in cows as a means of minimizing production, growth and costs.
Economic benefits led the response to regulations, with an estimated 1 million infected cows entering the human food chain, and about 233 people died in 1988 before they managed to keep cattle.
Some experts have suggested that H5N1 may have entered a herd of dairy cows in the US through the practice of feeding “pork trash” prohibited in the UK, and may be cheaper than soybeans and grains. Poultry garbage is a calorie-dense mixture of chicken waste (feces, feathers, floors).
The global market value of agricultural animals ranges from USD 1.61 to 3.3 trillion per year. Livestock are politically and politically protected.
threat
In cooperation with this, the rise of an increasingly oligocholistic food industry will further control an estimated 64% of the UK grocery market, with 10 conglomerates, who own half of all food sales in the US and UK, as well as four retailers (Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda and Morrison).
Such dramatic profit and electricity concentrations are gradually blurred in the food regulations situation, where policies are skewed by industry interest and accountability.
But it doesn’t have to be a global race to the bottom. We have the ability to prevent new pandemic catastrophes – we can put an end to nightmarish live transport of traps, cages, and non-human animals.
If you do that, it’s no longer an ideology. It is a sustainable, nonpartisan, empirical policy response to one of the most urgent and existential threats to human health.
This author
Esme Wheeler is Brooke’s Global Policy and Advocacy Advisor, action for horse and donkey work, and is based in Brighton.
