- [Narrator] The COVID-19 pandemic,
also know as the 2019 novel coronavirus,
began as an epidemic in China,
before rapidly spreading across the globe
in a matter of months.
- COVID-19 has since spread to nearly every country
in the world.
The U.S, is now the worst hit,
followed closely by several European nations.
- [Narrator] This led the World Health Organization
to classify it as a pandemic.
- Describing the situation as a pandemic
does not change WHO's assessment
of the threat posed by the virus.
It doesn't change what WHO is doing
and it doesn't change what countries should do.
- [Narrator] Many pandemics have spread to humans
from our close proximity with animals.
These are known as zoonotic infections,
or diseases that can spread from animals to humans.
Experts believe that the coronavirus is zoonotic,
originating from wild animal meat sold
at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China.
According to the CDC,
75% of emerging infectious diseases in people
are spread from animals.
There were three influenza pandemics in the 20th century,
all of which have been linked to animal origins.
The Spanish Flu of 1918 infected 500 million people,
a quarter of the global population at the time,
between January 1918 and December 1920.
- Perhaps until recently Spanish Flu has been
what some people call a forgotten pandemic,
but it was a huge global calamity.
- [Narrator] The death toll is estimated
to be between 50 million and 100 million,
making it the deadliest pandemic in recorded history.
The exact origin of the virus has not been pinpointed.
Epidemiological data indicates that the pandemic
may have begun in the U.S. in March 1918
at a crowded army camp in Fort Riley, Kansas.
- [Woman] He had a fever, sore throat,
headache, nothing serious.
One minute later, another soldier showed up.
By noon, the hospital had over 100 cases.
In a week, 500.
- Maureen Miner noticed a population
that he was servicing was getting sick and very sick
with an influenza unlike any he had ever seen before.
He considered it so serious, he felt the need
to alert the U.S. public health service to this.
- [Narrator] Another theory is that it started
in a British base camp at Etap,
in Northern France, in the winter of 1917.
Experts believe that the live pigs and nearby live geese,
duck, and chicken markets may be linked
to the virus' spread through the over-crowded camp.
A 2014 study from the University in Arizona, in Tucson,
found that the virus likely originated from poultry.
Previous studies have revealed that it likely circulated
around humans and pigs for at least two to 15 years
before becoming a lethal virus.
The flu pandemic of 1957, AKA the Asian Flu,
first emerged in East Asia in 1957.
- One of the upper respiratory infections,
something like a cold,
only it's caused by a flu virus
and the difference between the Asian influenza
and the influenza that we've been having all
of these past few years is that this strain began in,
the strain of a virus,
began in Hong Kong and spread from Hong Kong
to the rest of the world, including the United States.
- [Narrator] It's estimated that the virus
killed 1,100,00 people worldwide.
The exact origin is unknown,
but some experts believe it may have been transmitted
to humans from wild ducks or poultry.
The 1968 flu pandemic was first recorded in Hong Kong
in July 1968.
The virus killed an estimated 1,000,000 people worldwide.
This was the first known outbreak of H3N2,
a viral strain that can affect humans, poultry, and pigs.
Researchers isolated H3N2 in U.S. turkey and swine farms,
and found that some strains of the virus
can be transmitted from turkeys to pigs, and then to humans.
The virus that caused the Spanish flu pandemic,
influenza A, virus subtype H1N1,
emerged as a different strain
in the 21st century, swine flu, the swine flu pandemic
lasted between January 2009 to August 2010.
- Influenza pandemics, whether moderate
or severe, are remarkable events
because of the almost universal susceptibility
of the world's population to infection.
- WHO raised its pandemic alert from phase 4 to phase 5
due to the increasing human-to-human spread.
- [Narrator] Infecting between 700,000,000
to 1,400,000,000 people across the globe.
The World Health Organization confirmed
18,036 swine-flu-related deaths worldwide,
but between 151,700 and 575,400 died from the virus.
According to the CDC, researchers found that the genetic
makeup of H1N1 combines an assortment of five different
types of influenza, North American swine influenza,
North American avian influenza, human influenza,
and two swine influenza viruses from Eurasia.
Concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs,
are a possible origin of H1N1.
- This is the most concerning emergence
of a novel flu virus in forty years.
- [Narrator] Thought to have originated in Mexico,
experts say that at some point, someone came
into contact with an infected pig at a farm
during transportation, or at the slaughterhouse.
(pigs squealing)
- [Narrator] According to Gregory Gray,
an infectious disease epidemiologist
at Duke University, "when respiratory viruses
get into these confinement facilities,
they have continual opportunity to replicate,
mutate, re assort, and recombine into novel strains.
While these viruses can run quickly
through human populations and then burn out,
in CAFOs viruses have a greater potential
to spread due to the continual introduction
of new animals, viruses can then infect
factory farm workers, though not a pandemic,
the severe acute respiratory syndrome,
AKA SARS virus, has animal origins as well.
- [Reporter] The doctor's union
recommending drastic moves to deal
with the epidemic, they say all businesses
should be shut down for a fortnight
to stop the infection spreading
from person to person in the workplace.
- [Narrator] The 2002 to 2004 outbreak
infected 8,098 people and killed 774.
In 2017, scientists
from the Wuhan Institute of Viralogy, in China,
traced SARS to horseshoe bats
in the Yunnan province, civets, a nocturnal
animal native to tropical Asia and Africa,
acted as an intermediary between the virus,
bats, and humans, it was likely
passed on to humans, through civets sold
at meat markets in China, in the wake
of the coronavirus, China banned the sale
and consumption of wild animal meat.
- Wild animal wet markets have long been
recognized as a major pandemic threat.
As coronavirus spread, China announced
it would crack down on them.
- [Narrator] There's been a growing concern
among people over the consumption
of wild animals and the hidden dangers it brings
to public health security
since the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, outbreak.
Jang Tiwari, a spokesman for the top legislature's
Legislative Affairs Commission said in statement
"But wild animal markets aren't the only concern.
"New viruses come from factory farms as well."
According to Gray, new strains of coronavirus
have the potential to come from swine CAFOs,
due to the fact that humans and pigs
share similar immune systems.
He believes that identifying new viruses
in CAFOs should be a priority.
Diseases derived from animal agriculture
can even effect produce, leafy greens,
such as, spinach, lettuce, and fresh herbs, are some
of the vegetables most frequently linked
to bacterial infections, according
to the Food Safety Project, there were
713 produce-related outbreaks,
associated with food-borne disease
between 1995 and 2005, the main causes
of these bacterial outbreaks prior to harvesting
are linked to animal agriculture.
Soil acts as a reservoir for pathogens
due to the addition of animal waste.
Following a 2006 E, coli outbreak,
the CDC, FDA, and officials from California
traced the infection's origins
back to contaminated spinach.
Investigations linked the contaminated spinach
samples to cattle manure and pig feces
from a California ranch, water contaminated
by farm animal waste may have also caused
the infection, a 2018 outbreak
was also linked to animal agriculture.
The FDA believes that manure
from a cattle feed lot in Yuma, Arizona,
one of the largest lettuce growing regions
of the country, was likely washed
into a nearby irrigation ditch, and water
then carried the contaminated waste
to vegetables fields.
- [Reporter] Lettuce grown in Yuma
is being blamed for an outbreak of E, coli
across the United States, the CDC says
there have been 35 cases in eleven states linked to it.
- [Narrator] Dust from the feed lot
may have also caused the outbreak.
Lettuce farmers believe that their fields
need to be located further
away from cattle feed lots,
while others have discussed buying the feed lot,
which houses 100,000 cows, and shutting it down
can prevent further outbreaks.
Like coronavirus and SARS, some other diseases
spread from humans to animals,
such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy,
better known as "Mad Cow Disease."
In the 1980s and again in the 2000s,
mad cow disease, known as Creutzfeld-Jakob's
disease in humans made headlines.
While not contagious through person-to-person
contact, the fatal degenerative brain disease
was linked to cattle that were fed
sheep remains infected by Scrapie.
While humans have always been affected by viruses,
pandemics began when humans started living
in close proximity to animals, this made it easier
for diseases to jump animals to humans.
In the 2006 "Bird Flu, A Virus of our Own Hatching,"
Doctor Michael Gregor wrote "If you actually want
"to create global pandemics, then build factory farms."
In a speech for the UW School of Medicine
and Public Health, he said.
- [Michael] " There has never been
a single recorded emergence of a
highly pathogenic flu virus in chickens
kept outdoors, never once has a dangerous,
deadly, flu, virus ever seem to arisen,
that we know of, in an outdoor chicken flock.
Now you can breed the deadly virus here;
it can escape and infect backyard birds,
free ranging flocks, even wild birds,
but that transformation from harmless
to deadly, always seems to happen
in these kind of conditions.
- [Narrator] As long as humans continue
to eat meat, we run the risk of coming
into contact with new zoonotic diseases,
but a shift away from animal agriculture
and wild animal meat toward a new,
plant-based food system could help create
a safer, healthier, and kinder world.
That's it for today,
what are your thoughts on pandemics,
do you think they're related to animal agriculture?
Let us know in the comments below.
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(hopeful music)