How does animal exploitation increase the emergence of new diseases?
With the world fighting a vicious new pandemic, Ian asks a front-line physician, an epidemiologist, a public health expert and activists about how new diseases spill over from other animals, and how factory farming and the wildlife trade raise our vulnerability.
Play or download (42MB MP3 30min) (via iTunes)
Contributors:
- Dr Aysha Akhtar (@DrAyshaAkhtar)
- Dr Laura-Jane Smith (King’s College Hospital) (@DrLauraJane)
- Prof Jonna Mazet (University of California Davis)(@JonnaMazet)
- Peter Kemple Hardy (World Animal Protection)
Zoonoses and Vegan Activism
You’ve probably heard animal activists linking the Covid-19 pandemic to human treatment of animals well before you listened to my show – part of the reason for doing this show was to give people the information to talk about the link without drifting into hyperbole.
For example, “Earthling” Ed Winters famously got a roasting in the UK’s tabloid press for a viral Facebook post in which he blamed half a dozen new diseases on meat-eating. From what I’ve learnt doing the show, it was his categorical certainty that’s wrong rather than his general point (and, arguably, tone). I thought his later video on the subject was more nuanced.
Has it Been Three Years?
It took me almost a year to close VegHist after transmitting the final episode, and then I got distracted by UK politics. (Which, in fairness, is very distracting.)
My next goal for The Vegan Option is to do some short videos based on the history series. Of course, as someone who set out to make a series of 10 x 15 minutes but made a ten hour epic instead, I’m not very good at “short”. (I feel a personal sense of triumph that I didn’t have to edit this episode down to the half-hour broadcast slot.)
Bibliography
Credits
Theme by Robb Masters. The featured image is CC-BY-SA Scientific Animations, as it is based on their SARS-Cov-2 virus image, combined with a circle of animal kingdom icons for which I’d be happy to credit the original author, if I knew who they were.
