Covid-19 and a many of zoonotic diseases, spreading between animals and humans, have been, worldwide, the cause of many historic outbreaks including H1N1 and Ebola. If there is little evidence that eating less meat directly reduces the occurrence of deadly disease outbreaks, Rosie Frost in the “Plant-based diets could prevent a future pandemic” 14/05/2020, reported that “a group of British doctors has backed a call for the end of factory farming to prevent future pandemics like COVID-19”and / or ”There is more information about the meat industry causing diseases than ever before and stronger links between the impacts on our health compared to a meat-free diet.” And “More than 70 per cent of emerging diseases affecting people originated in wildlife and domestic animals”. The UN Environment Programme lists an increased amount of close contact between animals and humans as the most significant risk for zoonotic diseases. Does this “means” that there is a high relationship between meat diet and zoonotic diseases source?
During this pandemic period, many different opinions are in circulation, so it is hard to say whether the pandemic has had a direct impact on people’s customs or pledges, but “it’s clear that people are making the connection between public health conditions and intensive factory farming systems”. Many of us know that a healthy plant-based diet, which minimizes or eliminates meat, is associated with some of the lowest rates of chronic disease and a longer and healthier life.
It is known the fact that “good health is reliant on a balanced diet that supports our immune system”. Most important plant species or crops used for our nutrition are very small in number, especially just three crops; rice, wheat and maize. Much of these are highly industrialized processed products like bread or are turned into sweeteners ingredients. Unfortunately, our, intensive food production system and highly industrialized processes makes nutritionally poor food cheap and easily available.
In my opinion restoring a healthy balance between nature (biodiversity) and people, we can prevent future outbreaks and impact of diseases on society, because biodiversity is directly linked to nutrition and influence on food production.
While the poor diets, animal rich, of many does increase our risk of getting infections and the virulence of the infection that is another result of our current farming/eating practices. The loss of habitat to produce meat in such large quantities has resulted in environmental degradation and the forced contact of wild animals with domesticated livestock. These contacts cause the spread of new viruses, the mixture of new genetics in polyviral infections, and the increase of infections due to the contact and unhealthy farming situations. Also, please see the concepts of 'One Health' on these issues.
In my opinion, it is important to have a balanced diet and maintaine a healthy lifestyle. Most people nowadays has shifted toward meat free diet ( vegetarian and vegan). Although, it has been shown they have lower rates of heart disease, type two diabetes and high blood pressurem, nothing ensured if this is due to the diet itself or due to the healthy lifestyle they usually follow. If we are talking about zoonotic disease, I think if is important to understand how they transmitted, route of transmission and if there is any reservoirs, also can meat itself be a source of such disease and which one? The raw meet or the cooked one? It is all about hygiene.
Dear Robert, thank you for the your scientific argument answer. I agree with you the loss of habitat to produce meat in large quantities (in general not with high quality) has resulted in environmental degradation and the forced contact of wild animals with domesticated livestock. Many Thanks, Belul
Dear Narjes, thank you for the answer. Your opinion and arguments are scientifically with high interest to be discussed largely about a balanced diet, consumption of meat and healthy lifestyle. Thank you very much, Belul
These articles can shed some light on your question:
1. Article COVID-19 Among Workers in Meat and Poultry Processing Facili...
2. Article What type of meat will we eat in the future: Still conventio...
3. Article COVID‐19 and the Canadian cattle/beef sector: Some prelimina...
We do need to be careful as there are 3 different arguments/ideas that are involved with this question:
1 - The meat cutters/processors work in awful and crowded conditions that increase the spread of the disease. This has less to do with the meat having or carrying viruses as the close working conditions for spread from person to person. Obviously, if we ate less meat, and paid more for humane processing of meats this would not be occurring to this extent.
2 - Eating as much meat as people do now (especially in U.S.) leads to the increasing chronic diseases that have become prevalent. Maybe the poor diet, lack of fiber rich foods, increases infection rates as well.
3 - The more global idea and a part of One Health is that our increasing destruction of natural habitats to create 'farms' for animals can and does lead to an increase in new types of pathogens jumping from other animals to our food animals.
All three of these ideas need to be discussed by the larger society (-ies?) and the impact of all three need to be reduced to protect human health.
We should also not forget that our 'desire' for cheap and fast meats has led to what is called 'fast food' (even though rarely fast or cheap anymore). This has led to not only a pandemic of chronic health problems it is also a great location for the transmission of pathogens. Hiring poor (and yes often unhealthy) individuals and paying them poor wages, without health care coverage, expecting them to work multiple jobs to pay their bills means those hamburgers are cooked by people with a high likelihood of carrying disease organisms, the wrappers are good places for contamination, the joint areas for supplies (forks, ketchup, etc.) are usually contaminated, the counters, etc. all create a great place for passing of pathogens. Part of the problem is, that we often ignore and forget our stop at fast food places but do remember our dinner elsewhere where we sat for a longer time. Misdirection of finding infection sources occurs easily. Also, most infections are mild, not noted, but can be passed on to others.
Hitherto, I have not come across any research paper in a leading scientific journal mentioning that consumption of meat can help in spreading of pandemics like COVID-19.
Basically I do not think on meat; living organisms we will consider and human also.
No, there’s no direct linkage nor evidence!! meat is a great source of Proteins for the human body. Apparently, consuming elevated quantities of animal origin fat and proteins and/or an unhealthy diet may encrease the human overall possibility of cardiovascular and other metabolic diseases that can lead to many syndromes or body response failures not only to Coronaviruses but all the other microbial agents.
but:
Covid-19 or Coronaviridae family is a zoonotic viral disease that is not part of Foodborne zoonoses; so there’s no evidence of transmission from animals to human consumers by means of eating animal origin product.
and
Swine influenza or H1N1 Orthomyxoviruses is another viral zoonotic disease and it can be transmitted by eating superficially contaminated pork meat products. But it has nothing to do with Coronavirus infection of animals and humans.
Dear Tana Shtylla Kika Thanks for the clear and very argument-ed answer.
Dear all,
In my opinion, the coronavirus crisis is a result of human disregard for nature and animals, which is totally based on food sources and human-wildlife relationships. Many researchers reported that SARS-CoV-2 have zoonotic origins from wild animals. Virus disease outbreaks in human populations are directly related to intermediate hosts. No matter if you are vegan or carnivore, you need to be concern about your food sources. It’s not about what you eat, it’s how your food was raised or grown. Although there is no evidence between meat consumption and coronavirus outbreak, we have to be sure what we consume is healthy. Anyway, we definitely need to ban wildlife consumption to prevent future public health risks.
Greeting,
Felipe
human as a part of biosphere is suffere from its "products" including infections as well... problems that our species in modern times is extremely numerous and we living some tmes in very dence "hot spots" (as Beijing... Barcelona, and muny others) which make perfect ambient for infection adaptation to atac humans, theres evolution in this direction, and spreading (as we can observe now: big cities in many countries primery goal of the COVID-19). Meet of wild animals is one of the possible and well known gates of the infections to to humans, so, fighting with the infections we need to close "gates" like this.
Completely agree with Felipe S. Campos what really matters here is food resources more than consumption habits. Of course I agree that population behavior impacts meet industry, and that has to do with human diseases, but coronavirus origin point towards a bad trade between humans and the wild species market.
Nice answers Felipe S. Campos, Andrey Rudoy and Juan F. García-Moreno. It is juts a matter of time until the next zoonotic disease spills over to humans. We have the perception that Covid-19 is a terrible disease, even if some politicians just call it a "little flu". But what lays ahead can even be more deadly than the actual outbreak. My guess is that one of the next corona-viruses will start spreading from Brazil.
China harbors at least 120 bat species, less than the 167 sp found in Brazil, which ranks second in worldwide bat richness following Colombia. The pangolins ecological equivalent in America are armadillos, of which 20 sp can be found through Central and South America, only one species also reaching North America. Again Brazil takes the lead in terms of diversity with 11 species.
Hunting has been banned in Brazil since 1967. However, it is a widespread activity and also culturally embedded. Armadillos figure on top of the wish list of most hunters. Their tails are also used to cure deafness while Pallas's mastiff bats are used against asthma in traditional communities. Unfortunately wet markets selling bush-meat are still very common in Brazil. So Brazil has everything it needs to originate a new illness.
There is another way in which meat consumption can be affecting Covid-19 spreads. Most industrial slaughterhouses are negligent with their hygienic measures and as the corona-virus can survive for a long time in the low temperature environments several large meat industries have been experiencing some superspreading events (https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/corona-ausbruch-bei-toennies-so-verbreiteten-sich-die-viren-im-schlachtbetrieb-a-333ad4be-4ebd-4ab0-928f-64ad5173af88).
Thanks Mirco Solé, Andrey Rudoy, Juan F. García-Moreno ! Great comments! I also suggest reading a very exciting paper published this week in Science, which is key to discuss conservation ecology against future zoonosis outbreaks. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6502/379