The industrial farming of animals such as pigs, poultry and cattle to provide meat for hundreds of millions of people may reduce the risk of pandemics and the emergence of dangerous diseases including
Sars, BSE, bird flu and Covid-19 compared with less-intensive farming, a major study by vets and ecologists has found.
Despite
reports from the UN and other bodies in the wake of Covid linking the intensive farming of livestock to the spread of zoonotic (animal-borne) diseases, the authors argue that “non-intensive” or “low-yield” farms pose a more serious risk to human health because they require far more land to produce the same amount of food.
This, it is argued, increases the chances of “spillover” of dangerous viruses between animals and humans because it drives habitat loss, which displaces disease-carrying wild animals such as bats and rodents and brings them into closer contact with farmed animals and humans.
The
authors of the report, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, acknowledge that the rapidly increasing consumer demand for meat and other animal products is posing a significant risk to humanity.
