Viveca Morris, executive director of the Law, Ethics & Animals Program at Yale Law School, argues that diseases like Covid-19 are a consequence of the way we are treating animals and their habitats. This includes factory farms where animals live in conditions that are “hotbeds for viral and bacterial pathogens”. The same animals are fed medically important antibiotics creating the conditions for antibiotic resistant infections to develop. This put people at great risk of deadly viral epidemics. Preventing further outbreaks requires a “radical changes to business as usual”.
“We pack most of the world’s livestock animals, for all or part of their lives, into crammed living conditions that are hotbeds for viral and bacterial pathogens, and then we lace their feed with the world’s most medically important antibiotics, creating perfect conditions for antibiotic-resistant pathogens to develop. The public pays the price in the form of drug-resistant UTI and MRSA infections… and increased risk of deadly viral epidemics…”
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