The next pandemic might come from a factory farm in China or the US. Is the world prepared?

It should come as no surprise that a burger-lover like President Donald Trump has declared the United States’ crisis-hit meat industry as “critical infrastructure”. More than 10,000 workers at 170 meatpacking plants have fallen victim to Covid-19, and many plants have temporarily shut. The meat giant Tyson Foods has warned that the US “food supply chain is breaking”.

While the Covid-19 pandemic may have been linked to a squalid wildlife and seafood market in Wuhan, in central China, we should not forget that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic is thought to have originated in pig farms. Modern intensive farming is less a victim of the present global pandemic than the likely cause of future pandemics.

And, as concentrated animal feeding operations at the heart of modern intensive farming play a critical role in the propagation of zoonotic diseases – those spread from animals to humans – perhaps even more important is their role in the mass consumption of antibiotics, which has turbocharged the spread of diseases that are now resistant to antibiotics.

Humans today consume less than a quarter of all the antibiotics produced and sold. Over three-quarters are produced for the meat industry, in particular in China, the US and Brazil, for two main reasons: for metaphylaxis, to enable farm animals to survive their brief but drab lives in industry-scale farms; and to fatten them up faster, so they can reach slaughter weight more quickly and profitably.