As of February 27, 2020, there are over 82,000 cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and over 2,800 resulting deaths (World Health Organization 2020). Given the virus was first transmitted via animal-to-human contact, I feel this is a good time to talk about eating animals as a pervasive risk to public health. The link is clear—a virus jumped from animal to human in a large seafood and live animal market and then spread between humans. This little bug, if you will, caused the world to be on the verge of a pandemic.
In my opinion, the story of the COVID-19 outbreak is lacking the food safety perspective—specifically, how the general public is underinformed about a lot of food safety issues. Our priority right now is containing the outbreak and providing care for those who are affected, and rightly so. It’s disheartening to see the numbers increase every day, showing us that this is a time for human compassion and intense epidemiological work. Nevertheless, I can’t help but think this is a good time to talk about food safety issues as public health issues, too.
Animals are an easy target when talking about food safety. There are regulations to reduce the risk of animal products being contaminated as they make their way from farm to fork. But these regulations aren’t tight enough to guarantee a seal against pathogens. Some are bound to seep through the cracks—and they do.
We all hear about outbreaks that cause retailers to frantically pull products from their shelves. We accept some level of risk every time we pull an animal product—meat, dairy, eggs—and put it in our cart. However, do we really feel this risk? Likely not. The animal agriculture industry does a great job at keeping us blind to what happens behind the barn door, at the food processing plant, and on the truck to the retailer. The USDA Food Safety Inspection Service reports recalls all the time, but unless we hear about them in the news, we probably don’t think much about food safety risk.
Yet sometimes the risk is staring you in the face. The market where COVID-19 is believed to have originated sells live animals in close quarters with other meat and vegetables. These animals carry all sorts of things. Does it really take a deadly outbreak for us to think more critically about eating animals? COVID-19 should not be the only reminder that eating animals always poses some level of threat to public health. Apart from viruses, research shows that animals as sources of foodborne illness is a recurring problem. In one review, researchers concluded that outbreaks and deaths caused by pathogenic bacteria (e.g., E. coli and Salmonella) will continue to wreak havoc worldwide as there are no effective interventions to eliminate them from animals (Heredia and Garcia 2018). Furthermore, foodborne illness can sometimes disguise itself as a stomach bug, which is just one small example of how we can be led to underestimate how much we get sick from eating animals.
Media attention on COVID-19 allows us to see what these tiny invisible pathogens are capable of. We’re racing to control the spread and create measures to better prepare ourselves for future outbreaks. Because surely this won’t be the last of its kind. These deadly outbreaks are periodic, and the in-between periods are convenient times for forgetting that eating animals poses a public health risk. Some animal handling standards will get tighter in light of this deadly virus, but they will still not guarantee total safety.
Our regulations in the U.S. around food safety are permeable to risk, too. Our demand for animal products means that we accept the risk that passes through the chain, from farm to fork. If we ate less animal products, we would incur less risk. In my opinion, animals are not meant to be eaten by humans. Of course, you can argue plants are not meant to be eaten by humans either. But if we have to eat something (barring the argument that you could make food from chemicals in a lab), why not take the less risky route?
The case for plant-based diets is strongly supported by other reasons—the environmental impact of animal agriculture being a significant one. But if we focus solely on food safety, plants are by far the safer food. They don’t ask for much—just some water, soil, air, and light. Of course, that soil needs to be clear of pathogens introduced by animal manure, and the plants, once ready for processing, need to be kept at proper temperatures. But there are significantly less boxes to check in ensuring safe food handling practices for plants. That’s one reason to eat them more.
A case for plant-based diets can be put very simply—plants are nutritious and less likely than animals to bring you pathogens on a platter. Again, putting aside all other reasons to eat plants, the toll COVID-19 has taken on the health of humans shows us that eating animals continues to pose a risk to public health. A health-threatening virus that spread between humans because of an animal that was meant to be eaten as food, or at least was in close contact with animals meant as food…does that not say something? Think about it and eat a plant.
References
Heredia, Norma and Santos Garcia. 2018. “Animals as sources of food-borne pathogens: A review.” Animal Nutrition 4 (3): 250-55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aninu.2018.04.006
World Health Organization. n.d. “Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) Situation Report – 38.” Coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) situation reports. Accessed February 27, 2020. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200227-sitrep-38-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=9f98940c_2
