As we are fast-approaching a post-antibiotic era, the effectiveness of antibiotics used to treat human illnesses may be reduced if pathogens and resistance genes from the agricultural environment are repeatedly, but silently, being introduced into the human population.
It’s not just dangerous viruses lurking in factory farms, such places provide the perfect environment for pathogenic bacteria to spread and evolve too.
We now rely heavily on antibiotics to treat and prevent infection but what many people don’t realise is that they are also widely used in agriculture and aquaculture. The overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals has led to the emergence of multidrug-resistant “superbugs.”
The coronavirus pandemic may have originated, it is thought, in a wet market rather than a factory farm, but the risk factors in such places are very similar.
The 1998-1999 Malaysian outbreak of Nipah virus exemplifies how factory farming provides a pathway for disease to spread and develop into a lethal threat to human health
Bovine tuberculosis (bovine TB or bTB) is an infectious zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium bovis. Badgers have been blamed as the primary reason for bTB spreading, the idea being that infected badgers spread the disease into dairy herds.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rare and fatal condition that affects the brain. It causes brain damage that worsens rapidly over time. The unhealthy practice of feeding cows the remains of other dead cows and sheep was acknowledged as the probable cause of this fatal neurodegenerative disease.
Some researchers are even more worried about pigs than poultry because pigs are susceptible to infection with flu viruses from other pigs, humans and birds.
Factory farms provide the perfect breeding ground for disease. It’s the perfect setting for viruses and bacteria to mutate and spread.
