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This article was updated on: 02/02/2023
As Covid 19 cases continue to fluctuate, destroying lives and negatively impacting global economies, evidence of our ability to sleepwalk straight into another global health crisis with the potential to be far greater than the current one, comes from the current rise in Avian influenza (known more commonly as bird flu) cases circulating around the world.
Severely sick and dead wild birds are washing up along our shores and beaches and international conservation organisations are documenting bird deaths which are devastating entire breeding bird populations and threatening endangered species.
Over 280 new avian influenza outbreaks in poultry production systems and 139 in non-poultry were reported between Dec 2022 and Jan 2023 alone, with numbers rising from previous months. This has led to the slaughter and disposal of over 10 million birds from 17 countries and territories covering the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia in the same period. With estimates suggesting that over 315 million birds have been killed due to avian influenza outbreaks alone between 2005 and 2021.
Evidence of disease transmission from birds to mammals is also growing. The virus has been found in grizzly bears in America and farmed mink in Spain, as well as in seals and a dolphin.
In the UK, the Animal and Plant Health Agency has tested 66 mammals, including seals, and found nine otters and foxes were positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1. It is believed they had fed on dead or sick wild birds infected with the virus. The animals were found to have a mutation of the virus that could make it easier to infect mammals, but there was no evidence of transmission between mammals.
Yet whilst cases on farms continue to rise, more sick and dying birds wash up on our shores, and more cases are found where the virus has been transmitted from birds to mammals, our desire for cheap and convenient poultry meat continues to grow, forcing more and more birds into the same intensive farming systems that led to the development of the first devastating avian influenza strains.
Hens, ducks, geese, turkeys and other farmed birds are confined in crowded industrial farms, genetically manipulated and fed growth promoters and antibiotics to force their bodies to grow as large and as quickly as possible to maximise economic benefit at the expense of the rights and the welfare of the individual animals. These conditions are the perfect breeding ground for novel and deadly diseases to develop and proliferate.
Avian influenza is a virus that predominantly affects birds, but strains of the virus have historically crossed the species barrier, leading to human deaths, with case fatality rates being exceptionally high. The H5N1 avian influenza strain has led to 456 deaths out of 865 cases reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO) since 2003, a 53% case fatality rate, 33 deaths from the H5N6 variant have been recorded, and between 2013 and 2022 there have been 1,568 confirmed human cases and 616 deaths worldwide from the H7N9 strain, a case fatality rate of 39%.
Whilst transmission from birds to humans thankfully remains infrequent and there has as yet been no sustained human-to-human transmission, the prospect of the virus strains mutating into a more virulent form always exists, and with such high case fatality rates the potential to have a devastating impact on the human population is ever present.
Despite this threat, and the clear evidence that intensified poultry production systems are leading to the emergence of avian influenza viruses, we continue to force chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys into smaller and smaller spaces, and breed near genetic clones of one another through decades of artificial selection for traits which include rapid growth, at the expense of the health and welfare of the individual birds.
When a virus emerges it spreads rapidly as it is met with little resistance. It subsequently becomes highly virulent, spreads to the wild bird population and possesses a substantial global health risk if it spills over into the human population.
To tackle these emerging global health crises, we must end the industrial production of animals for food, and so tackle emerging viruses before they have the opportunity to develop and thrive. Only by doing this can we prevent a global health emergency that could seriously overshadow that of Covid-19 developing due to our abuse of animals for our consumption.
To achieve this we must all question our lifestyle choices. We must end our reliance on cheap meat and our support for a political and economic system that rewards agribusiness for mass producing these products. We must embrace both the plant-based protein alternatives already available and the cellular meat production systems that present the opportunity to produce meat and dairy protein without the need for any animal to be crowded into an industrial warehouse and pumped full of antibiotics to keep it alive long enough for us to slaughter and eat it.
Changing the production and trading of farmed animals is where the focus must be if we are truly serious about preventing future pandemics of global significance rather than simply responding to them as they happen, and protecting populations of wild birds from the devastating impacts the spillover from such disease outbreaks cause.
Individually, we must reduce our consumption of animal products. Collectively, we must insist that public money is no longer used to prop up the factory farming systems that act as breeding grounds for such viruses, and insist that such funds be invested in plant-based meat alternatives and cellular agriculture.
Expanding scientific research and employment while spurring a transition to both animal-free and slaughter-free protein sources, transforming our global food system and ending the threat of future pandemics coming out of our industrial farming practices.
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