https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-factory-farming-animal-diet-meat-plant-based-humane-society-b813899.html >Countries’ leaders should speed up action to shift people’s diets towards more plant-based foods to reduce the risks of future pandemics breaking out, according to a new report by campaigners. >Global intensive animal farming, in which thousands of animals are kept in close proximity, causing high stress levels, is the perfect breeding ground for more novel viruses to emerge, says the white paper by Humane Society International. >The document identifies five key “pandemic risks” created by factory farming that it says create a “petri dish” for pathogens to erupt, mutate and spread: confining vast numbers of stressed animals indoors creates novel viral strains because their immune systems are weakened so they succumb to viruses easily expanding farms into previously wild areas brings wild and domestic species together, allowing diseases to jump concentrating animal farms in an area increases the risk of pathogens spreading the global live animal trade, in which huge numbers of live animals are transported globally, allows viruses to travel agricultural fairs and auctions and live animal markets where the public get close to species from different places, let viruses proliferate. >UN experts have previously said that industrial animal farming has caused most new infectious diseases in humans in the past decade – and risks starting new pandemics. >In addition, some of the world’s leading scientists , from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), have warned that future pandemics are likely to be more frequent, spread more rapidly and kill more people if humanity fails to transform how it is damaging the environment and exploiting wildlife. >Outbreaks of dangerous new diseases with the potential to become pandemics are on the rise, having become four times as frequent in the past half-century. >A survey has found that almost half of Britons who eat meat feel hypocritical for loving animals while eating others. >When asked how strongly they agree with the statement “it’s hypocritical that we eat some animals, such as pigs, while loving others, such as dogs, and keeping them as pets”, 47.8 per cent of respondents either slightly or strongly agreed.
