Zoonotic diseases, Covid-19, HIV, Ebola, SARS, MERS and others, have been linked to ‘spill over’ from exploited animals to humans, and then transmitted among humans. Emerging diseases, and pandemics, are almost invariably zoonotic. An estimated 60% of all viruses that infect humans come from animals, and 75% of all new infectious diseases in the past decade are zoonotic. This is drastically increasing as a result of habitat destruction and disease transmission from unjustly incarcerated, exploited animals.
Zoonotic disease, the cause of epidemics and pandemics, is transmitted to humans from unjustly incarcerated and exploited animals. The deadliest pandemics in history are zoonotic. Speciesism, is the underlying cause of zoonotic disease. It is the abuse and exploitation of other species for the benefit of the human species and includes habitat destruction, species extinction, eating, incarcerating, and exploiting animals.
Zoonotic diseases caused an estimated 3 million human deaths per year before even before the Covid-19 pandemic. This includes Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Ebola virus, SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, and Avian Flu, Black Death, Spanish Flu, and many, many others.
COVID-19 originated from an animal unjustly incarcerated and awaiting extrajudicial execution in a live animal market. Live Markets, or ‘wet markets’, offer the sale and on-site slaughter of a multitude of innocent animals. This often includes endangered or threatened wild animals, and other animals who never come into contact with one another in the wild.
These markets exist all over the world. Covid-19 is believed to have started in one in Wuhan, China. Scientific evidence indicates that the virus originated from a bat coronavirus, then transferred to an intermediate host, either a domestic or wild animal, and finally to a captive, exploited animal individual used as food by humans. The virus ultimately evolved into SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, and spread to humans.
HIV/AIDS, also from zoonotic origins has infected more than 33 million people worldwide. More than 25 million people have died. HIV/AIDS originated when an established SIV switched from primates to humans through exposure to blood or other secretions of infected primates. This occurred through the hunting and butchering of innocent wild animals. Bites and other injuries caused by primates kept as pet animals can cause a viral transmission according to ‘Future Medicine’.
Ebola virus disease (EVD), also from zoonotic origins, is a deadly disease with outbreaks that occur primarily on the African continent.
Swine Flu (H1N1) results from agricultural facilities, factory farms, with horrific conditions. Swine Flu H1N1 has a mortality rate of 60 percent, and could easily mutate and become more lethal. H1N1 originated in exploited innocent pigs in in the United States causing more than 200,000 infections and 18,000 human deaths, including 250 children. Innocent, exploited pigs suffered much higher casualties!
According to the World Health Organization, outbreaks of Bird Flu (H5N1) results in the deaths of hundreds of humans, and millions of chickens and other birds. H5N1 has an estimated human mortality rate of 60 percent, and could easily mutate and become more lethal. The innocent, exploited, victimized birds suffered much higher casualties!
The United Nations Summit on Biodiversity states that the emergence of deadly zoonotic diseases, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, MERS, Spanish, Black, and Avian Flu, Covid-19, and others, are the direct result of human imbalance with nature, specifically the supremacist exploitation of other species by humans.
Species extinction is happening at approximately 1,000 times the natural rate, and is a major factor in zoonotic disease. Approximately eighty percent of earth’s land area has already been heavily transformed by human activity, primarily due to expansion animal agriculture. As animal agriculture grows, it needs more resources of land and water, destroying the habitats of existing species and causing extinction of irreplaceable and unique individuals.
Habitat loss is positively correlated with increased zoonotic pandemics. High biodiversity reduces the risk of zoonotic disease by the ‘Dilution Effect’ protecting human health by reducing the risk of zoonotic disease. Species extinction from habitat destruction makes disease transmission between species more likely and more deadly.
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) maintains that farmed animals are the weakest link in the global food systems. Factory farms are epicenters of disease for humans as well as for the billions of unfortunate animal individuals involuntarily incarcerated there. An estimated 99% of the ten billion unique individual land animals murdered for food every year are imprisoned in factory farms and murdered with impunity. Conditions make them susceptible to pathogens, which then get passed on to their human abusers (bridge population), and the human population in general through zoonotic pandemics.
The current human / animal relationship is unjust and unsustainable. This troubled relationship with animals keeps humanity at risk of zoonotic outbreaks, directly resulting from exploitation of animals and the environment shared with them.