The next global pandemic could come from the US.
that is someone’s solemn message Reports from Harvard Law School and New York Universitywhere we examine how humans, domestic and wild animals interact.
HIV/AIDS, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Zika fever, H1N1 flu, COVID-19, and many other dreaded diseases we live in have originated in animals. Some originated in other countries, usually on the continents of Africa or Asia. These so-called zoonotic diseases are often caused by poor hygiene, lack of government oversight or unsafe practices in the area.
Americans often think, “That doesn’t happen here,” but because regulations are so lax and interactions so frequent, researchers have found that viruses and other contagious insects can easily jump from animals to humans in the United States, causing deadly outbreaks.
“There is a real false sense of security and unfounded belief that zoonotic diseases are happening elsewhere,” says Ann Linder, one of the report’s lead authors and associate director of policy and research in the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School. “In fact, I think we are more vulnerable than ever in many ways.”
The report, also led by the New York University Center for Environmental Animal Care, highlights several areas of vulnerability, such as commercial farms and their keepers, where millions of livestock are in close contact with each other. The wildlife trade, in which animals are imported with little or no medical examination. And in the fur trade, minks and other animals are raised for fur with little safety oversight.
“Globalization has erased the boundaries of oceans, mountains and other natural diseases,” said Linder, a legal and animal policy expert. “We mix animals and pathogens across different continents, circulating at a dizzying and ever-accelerating pace.”
The United States has about 10 billion land animals in captivity, and that number is growing by about 200 million each year, according to the report. The United States, for example, has more pigs and poultry than almost anywhere else in the world, and is the most likely vector for particularly deadly influenza outbreaks, the report found.
Industry representatives were quick to defend the safety of their operations.
“According to the CDC, the likelihood of avian disease spreading to humans in the United States is extremely rare,” Ashley Peterson, senior vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs at the National Poultry Council, said in an emailed statement.
The pork industry group did not respond to requests for comment.
Workers on pig farms and poultry farms are particularly vulnerable because of the lack of regulations that protect them, said Delcianna Winders, associate law professor and director of the Institute for Animal Law and Policy at Royalton University in Vermont.
“The keeping of animals on farms is virtually unregulated. Regulations on slaughterhouses are limited, but very inadequate, and the situation is getting worse,” said Winders, who was not involved in the report but has studied similar areas. “Right now, the federal government is deregulating slaughter rather than increasing oversight.”
The mink and other fur industries don’t produce food, Linder said, so they’re even less regulated.
Different study publishedlast week The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that “minks pose more risk to future disease outbreaks and future pandemic development than any other farmed species.” According to other studies, Minks are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2the virus that causes the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and Outbreak detected on 18 US mink farms The first two years of the pandemic. At least four Americans, two of whom worked on mink farms, are believed to have contracted the animal.
“We are unequivocal about our commitment to the health and safety of our animals, our workforce and the communities in which we operate,” said Charice Hobbs, executive director of the U.S. Fur Commission, a trade group.
The industry has worked with federal and state officials to vaccinate 95 percent of the U.S. mink population starting in the summer of 2021, he said. This cost is fully covered by mink farmers, and we are also helping to fund SARS-CoV-2 monitoring projects in mink farms.
“Despite claims by animal rights activists, US farmed minks do not pose a significant threat to the general public,” he said.
Rinder said about 220 million live wild animals are imported into the United States each year for pets and other purposes, many without health and safety inspections.
If anyone wants to bring a dog or cat into the country, Linder said, they have to go through a process. “But if I’m a wildlife importer and I want to bring 100 wild mammals from South America, I can do that with very little regulation of any kind.”
perhaps First Ebola caseThe disease, which caused an outbreak in West Africa from 2013 to 2016, was thought to be caused by bushmeat. It’s illegal to import bushmeat into the United States, but it’s not illegal to import the same live animals that bushmeat is made from, she said. “There is a big gap.”
Both Linder and Winders highlighted the industry’s lack of transparency.
“A lot of it is hidden from the public,” Winders said. “We don’t monitor it, so there’s a lot we don’t know.”
Mr. Winders said he was concerned about how much money the government was spending to protect and subsidize industries that he believed put Americans at risk. She hopes Congress will use this year’s re-enactment of the Farm Bill to limit subsidies and impose new safety regulations on the livestock industry.
“Can’t you see the writing on the wall?” Winders asked. “Scientists tell us there is an imminent threat of a zoonotic outbreak that makes COVID-19 look like a triumph, but we still just ignore it, despite what we’ve experienced over the past few years.”
Please contact Karen Weintraub ([email protected]) and Adrianna Rodriguez ([email protected]).
USA TODAY’s coverage of health and patient safety is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation, and Competition in Healthcare.The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial opinion.
