Factory farmed animals cause pandemics and zoonotic disease
- See Mace and Knight, 2023 for a review in chickens and pigs
- Diseases in farm animals cause economic shocks
- See ProVeg's report, covered by Faunalytics "Eating Our Way To The Next Pandemic"
- Richie also did a public speech on this (ask him)
- Rohr et al., 2019 livestoock in general may be responsible for over 50% of zoonoses in general
- Goldstein et al., 2022 review evidence that agricultural expansion and intensification are key drivers of zoonotic spillover from animals to humans in China and SE asia
The last pandemic before COVID emerged from farm animals. This was the 2009 swine flu pandemic that started in Mexico, close to a major concentration of industrial pig farms.
Diseases that have historically caused high levels of damage are: Classical Swine Fever (CSF), African Swine Fever (ASF), Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, known as "Mad Cow Disease"), Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, (HPAI, known as "bird flu").
in 2021-2022 avian influenza caused 2,467 outbreaks in poultry in Europe, resulting in the slaughter of 47.7 million domestic birds in 37 countries (European Food Safety Authority, 2022).