511
Alarm as bird flu now ‘endemic in cows’ while Trump cuts staff and funding
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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I agree with your first two sentences.
But at least with COVID and AIDS, neither of those are attributed to animal agriculture. They crossed into humans through exposure to animals, but in the case of AIDS that was non-human primates most likely. And in the case of COVID it was most likely bats. But in neither of those instances were those animals part of an agricultural system. In other words they weren't being farmed
Swine flu, yes absolutely. Aids and COVID? Not so much.
HIV-1 virus exposure was most likely from bushmeat trade. COVID might have as well.
I was aware that COVID most likely came from wet markets. But that's selling hunted meat.
Animal agriculture is raising animals to eat. Often in confinement.
With bird flu, animal agriculture is a major cause for concern. But that doesn't mean animal agriculture was the cause of all pandemics.
I guess we could argue that eating meat might be. But I also don't want to tell folks who are living in poverty in other parts of the world that they can't hunt for food.
So I feel like the ethical arguments are different too.
Meat is a vector for all pandemics, so the goal should be to create a world where no one ever has to eat meat ever again.
Or where meat can be grown in a lab in controlled conditions.
That's always going to be vastly more expensive than just eating plants, it's just not a realistic way to feed everyone. It could really only ever be a sometimes food.
this one. I know it's a meme in vegan circles but meat really is fucking delicious.
Modern fake meat is not super distinguishable anymore. The stuff you buy at the market I mean, not the stuff that is sold at restaurants even when the brand is same (maybe restaurant cooks just don't know?)
Nope.
Agriculture is the raising of food. Rather that's vegetables or animals.
Hunting animals and selling them in a market isn't agriculture.
And if you had argued that killing animals and eating their meat is the source of diseases, well again that's not how AIDS started. And folks are catching bird flu from their cats bringing it in the house.
So animal agriculture certainly is one vector of transmission. And factory farming especially is a big issue, because animals are often in confinement where disease spreads easily, and then transfers into people.
But no, all pandemics did not come from animal agriculture. Or even eating meat.
I was under the impression primate bush meat consumption was believed to be the origin of HIV, is that not the case anymore?
According to (The National Institute of Health Library of Medicine)[https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3234451/] you are possibly correct. It most likely jumped to people from hunting bush meat, but it's possible it could also have made the jump to people in a livestock setting where someone was raising monkeys for sale as pets or lab animals. Getting bit by an infected animal could be enough to transmit the virus.