"How to Prevent the Next Pandemic"
Infectious diseases are emerging globally at an unprecedented rate.
Literally hundreds of new pathogens have emerged and re-remerged
over the last few decades and what we eat is responsible
for most of the new diseases that have jumped from animals to humans.
In response to the torrent of emerging zoonotic or animal-to-human diseases,
three of the world’s leading authorities— the World Health Organization,
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
and the World Organization for Animal Health,
held a joint consultation to determine the key underlying causes.
First on their list was the “Increasing demand for animal protein.”
The greatest swords of Damocles dangling
are the H5 and H7 bird flu viruses blanketing much of the earth.
A bird flu pandemic could be devastating
given their current upwards of Ebola-like flip-of-the-coin death rates.
Given that the emergence of these deadly bird flu viruses,
H5N1 and H7N9 are “linked to intensification of the poultry sector,”
there have been calls for the “de-industrialization of animal production,”
for example, as suggested here in the Annals of the
New York Academy of Sciences, “replacing large industrial units
with smaller farms with lower stocking densities,”
potentially resulting in less stress, less disease susceptibility,
less intense infectious contact, and smaller infectious loads.
Maybe they’re the ones that could use a little social distancing.
The American Public Health Association, the largest and oldest association
of public health professionals in the world, has called for a moratorium
on factory farming for nearly two decades now.
Maybe COVID-19 is the dry run we needed, the fire drill to awake us
from our complacency and reform the food system before it’s too late.
But if, as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
visualized it, the next pandemic starts with
“increased demand for poultry products,” before ending up
with human-to-human transmission, maybe we need to move beyond
just giving these animals some more breathing room.
This editorial in the journal of the American Public Health Association,
goes beyond just calling for a deintensification
of poultry industry, questioning the prudence
of raising so many animals for food in the first place.
It is curious, therefore, given the pandemic threat,
that changing the way humans treat animals—
most basically, ceasing to eat them or, at the very least,
radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten—
is largely off the radar as a significant preventive measure.
Such a change, if sufficiently adopted or imposed,
could still reduce the chances of the much-feared influenza epidemic.
It would be even more likely to prevent
unknown future diseases that, in the absence of this change,
may result from farming animals
intensively and killing them for food.
Yet, humanity doesn’t even consider this option.
However, thanks to food innovations, this may be changing.
Have you looked in the dairy case at the supermarket lately?
Some of America’s largest dairy producers have recently
filed for bankruptcy due to the constellation of new consumer choices.
I was peripherally involved in the largest meat recall in human history.
Remember the footage of the cows getting forklifted?
A hidden-camera investigation at a California slaughter plant
for “spent” dairy cows led to a recall of nearly 150 million pounds
of beef for violations of food safety rules meant to protect
the public from mad cow disease.
Downed dairy cows, too sick to even walk,
were being dragged to slaughter with chains
into the federal school lunch program.
You don’t have to worry about contaminated cattle brains...
in your oatmilk, though.
Plant-based milks are a no-brainer.
But, you can see what I’m saying.
Yes, you can pass public health regulations to stop
the cannibalistic feeding of slaughterhouse waste to dairy cows
—or you can just provide the public better alternatives and let
the market eliminate the risk entirely because there’s no prions in plants.
HIV/AIDS likely arose from people slaughtering primates.
30 million people wouldn’t be dead right now
if we were eating meals from bushes instead of bushmeat.
We can’t get coronaviruses from cauliflower.
There is no flu in falafel production no matter
how tightly you crowd the balls together.
What I'm saying, is our food choices
don’t just affect our personal health, but our global health.
Not just in terms of climate change, but in terms of stifling pandemic risk.
There's been a tremendous surge in interest in diversified protein sources,
given the increasing consensus that reduced meat consumption
is critical for addressing both the climate crisis
and our burgeoning epidemics of lifestyle diseases.
Eating less meat may not only help save the world,
but could help prevent the loss of
more than ten million human lives a year.
To their credit, in 2016, the Chinese government recommended
its citizens cut their meat consumption in half in part
to reduce their growing rates of chronic disease.
A completely plant-based diet might reap $30 trillion
from the health benefits alone, and that would be just
from the lowered rates of chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease,
type 2 diabetes, not even factoring in
the decreased catastrophic pandemic risk.
What we eat doesn’t just affect our personal health,
but our global health in more ways than one.
Making healthier choices could also help mediate the next coronavirus epidemic,
not only at the source by sidestepping wet markets,
but by also decreasing the rates of comorbidities found to increase
the risk in all the deadly coronaviruses:
SARS, MERS, and COVID-19.
Consider the underlying risk factors for COVID-19 severity and death—
obesity, heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes
and chronic pulmonary disease.
In virtually all studies, vegetable protein is superior to animal protein
in terms of lower rates of heart disease, and type 2 diabetes
and lower blood pressure than animal protein.
Here’s a meta-analysis published a few months ago
on diabetes risk and animal protein consumption.
For hypertension, meat including poultry may contribute
to a higher risk of high blood pressure.
Meat may even be associated with impaired lung function,
increasing the risk of lung diseases like emphysema.
The same diet that can help you survive this pandemic
can also help prevent the next.
So instead of propping up the meat industry to the tune
a 100 million taxpayer dollars a month, and forcing meat plants
to stay open, pandemic proof your diet.
Thankfully, expanded options are now hitting the meat case as well.
No longer a niche market for vegetarians, major meat producers
have started blending in vegetable proteins to make hybrid meat products
like Perdue’s chicken plus nuggets or Tyson’s “Whole Blends” sausage links.
Smithfield, the world’s largest pork producer,
recently debuted an entire line of plant-based products.
Hormel, has a new plant-based line too, the purveyors of SPAM…
now believe in the power of plants.
Check out this headline from a few weeks ago:
“KFC to roll out Cargill’s plant‐ based chicken across China.”
Talk about a cultural revolution.
And, we’re not talking about Tofurkey.
Cargill is America’s largest private corporation,
and one of the biggest meat packers in the world.
How many fewer curly-tailed viral mixing vessels are there now
that Dunkin’ Donuts has a meat-free breakfast sausage?
How many fewer hens are packed beak- to-beak now that egg-free mayo
has taken the sandwich spread sector by a storm?
Quorn, a brand of meat-free meat made from the mushroom kingdom,
opened a single facility that can produce the meat
equivalent of twenty million chickens per year.
These products may not be the healthiest from a personal standpoint—
a doughnut sandwich without pork is still a doughnut sandwich—
but hey, swap in an egg-free omelette from Tim Hortons
and from a pandemic standpoint?
Zero risk.
Doesn’t necessarily have to be plants, though.
In this review on food systems in the era of the coronavirus,
they noted that “researchers are seeking
alternative protein sources everywhere.”
Can’t think of any possible alternative to cow’s milk?
How about cockroach milk?
I mean, you think almond milk is nuts?
How about some of this on your corn flakes?
Could be healthier than cow’s milk, and hey no lactose,
no dairy allergy problems.
An important alternative.
I mean I can’t imagine anything else you can make milk out of.
And gluten-free too!
The only downside, evidently, was the flavor,
but the researchers— perhaps funded by Big Bug?—
chalked this up to the fact that the judges knew there were cockroaches
in the bread; and so, they were all just biased.
Hmmm... I think I’ll stick with the plants.
But if you’re like: “you’ll have to pry that pork chop
from my cold, dead hands,”
we may be able to have our meat and eat it too.
An even more innovative approach to pandemic prevention
was suggested by Winston Churchill in 1932.
In an article in Popular Mechanics entitled
“Fifty Years Hence,” he predicted that
“We shall escape the absurdity of growing
a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing,
by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”
And indeed, the prediction is becoming a reality.
Instead of taking a cutting from a plant and growing vegetables
you’re taking a sample from an animal and growing meat.
Potentially lots of meat, like maybe a billion pounds from a single sample.
Indeed, in terms of efficiency, growing meat straight from muscle cells
could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water use by as much as 96%,
and lower land use by as much as 99%, but when you factor in pandemic risk,
the benefits to human health of a slaughter-free harvest
could arguably rival those to planetary health.
Food safety has been considered the primary
human health benefit of such an approach.
There has been a six-fold increase in food poisoning
over the last few decades, sickening tens of millions of Americans every year,
and contaminated meats and animal products are the most common cause.
So, when the cultivated meat industry calls its product “clean meat,”
that’s not just a nod to clean energy.
Food-poisoning pathogens like E. coli, Campylobacter,
and Salmonella are due to fecal residue,
traces of which are found on most poultry sampled in the United States
and about half of retail ground beef and pork chops.
They’re intestinal bugs; so, you don’t have to worry about them
if you’re producing meat without intestines.
You don’t have to cook the crap out of meat, if there’s no crap to begin with,
just like you don’t have to worry about brewing up new respiratory viruses
that could kill millions of people if you’re making meat without the lungs.
“A culinary choice in south China led to a fatal infection in Hong Kong,
and subsequently to 8000 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS),
and nearly 1000 deaths in 30 countries on six continents.”
If only we had learned our lesson then.
We may be one bushmeat meal away
from the next HIV, one pangolin plate away
from the next killer coronavirus, and one factory farm away
from the next deadly flu.
Tragically, it may take a pandemic with a virus
like H5N1 before the world realizes the true cost of cheap chicken.