{"id":1801,"date":"2021-06-22T23:56:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T23:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farmforward1.wpengine.com\/?p=1801"},"modified":"2022-11-22T02:44:37","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T02:44:37","slug":"the-university-of-oxford-and-farm-forward-discuss-pandemic-risk-and-factory-farming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/news\/the-university-of-oxford-and-farm-forward-discuss-pandemic-risk-and-factory-farming\/","title":{"rendered":"The University of Oxford and Farm Forward Discuss Pandemic Risk and Factory Farming\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<section class=\"normal_content bg-white padding-top-small padding-bottom-large\" style=\"\">\n\t\t<div class=\"container\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"row center-md\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"col-md-7\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"content-styled\"><h2>Connecting the dots<\/h2>\n<p>In 2021, The University of Oxford\u2019s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics launched a Thinking Out Loud series on \u2018Animals and Pandemics\u2019 led by Dr. Katrien Devolder. She interviewed Farm Forward founder and CEO Dr. Aaron Gross about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=30BFiBPFVCg&amp;feature=youtu.be\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">why factory farms are breeding grounds for pandemics<\/a>, and what we, as individuals, can do to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/take-action\/end-big-poultry\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reduce the risk of new pandemics arising<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class='responsive-video'><iframe width='500' height='281' src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/30BFiBPFVCg?feature=oembed' frameborder='0' allow='accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture' allowfullscreen=''><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Dr. Devolder first learned of Farm Forward in an op-ed for The Guardian titled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/issues\/pandemics\/we-have-to-wake-up-factory-farms-are-breeding-grounds-for-pandemics\/\">\u201cWe Have to Wake Up: Factory Farms are Breeding Grounds for Pandemics,\u201d<\/a> which connected the dots between factory farming and pandemic risk. Written by Dr. Gross and a Farm Forward board member, best-selling author Jonathan Safran Foer, the op-ed notes the staggering pandemic virus threat posed by industrial pig and chicken farms and calls for societal change:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe link between factory farming and increasing pandemic risk is well established scientifically, but the political will to curtail that risk has, in the past, been absent. Now is the time to build that will. It really does matter if we talk about this, share our concerns with our friends, explain these issues to our children, wonder together about how we should eat differently, call on our political leaders, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/donate\/\">support advocacy organisations fighting factory farming<\/a>. Leaders are listening. Changing the most powerful industrial complex in the world \u2013 the factory farm \u2013 could not possibly be easy, but in this moment with these stakes it is, maybe for the first time in our lifetimes, possible.<\/p>\n<div class='responsive-video'><iframe width='500' height='281' src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Kbtgz-LoWH0?feature=oembed' frameborder='0' allow='accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture' allowfullscreen=''><\/iframe><\/div>\n<h2>The facts<\/h2>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/onehealth\/basics\/zoonotic-diseases.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a> (CDC), at least three out of every four new or emerging infectious diseases come from animals. With an estimated mortality rate of around two percent, COVID-19 is wreaking havoc worldwide. But it could have been much worse. Had COVID been another virus on the CDC watch list, like H5N1 (bird flu), we could be facing a pathogen with a 60 percent mortality rate. And of the 19 viruses currently dominating the CDC\u2019s list of influenza viruses with pandemic potential considered \u201cof special concern,\u201d at least 11 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fvets.2018.00084\/full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">emerged in commercial poultry farms<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>While COVID-19 may have emerged from a wet market, the greater pandemic risk is our insatiable appetite for cheap, factory farmed meat. The meat that we eat today is overwhelmingly from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/issues\/genetic-modification\/understanding-modern-poultry-breeding\/\">genetically uniform<\/a>, immunocompromised, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/issues\/antibiotics-public-health\/antibiotics-101\/\">regularly drugged animals<\/a> lodged by the tens of thousands into buildings or stacked cages \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/issues\/animal-product-labeling\/what-is-humanewashing\/\">no matter how the meat is labelled<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>A new way forward<\/h2>\n<p>The world is a different place since the emergence of COVID-19 \u2013 we are waking up to the huge costs and disruptions caused by a pandemic and we are more ready to act now to protect our future. Some political leaders have rightly called for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/issues\/food-policy\/farm-system-reform-act\/\">moratorium on new factory farms<\/a> while others are seeking additional <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/news\/stop-sacrificing-meatpacking-workers-lives\/\">protections for workers in slaughterhouses and meat packing plants<\/a>. In this moment we can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/news\/repair-is-possible\/\">re-envision a future without industrial agriculture<\/a> \u2013 in which alternatives abound and animals are raised with dignity.<\/p>\n<p>Your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/donate\/\">support<\/a> can make a different future possible. Consider a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/donate\/\">recurring gift today<\/a> to help Farm Forward ensure a better world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/section>\n\n\n\t<section class=\"last_updated padding-top-small padding-bottom-large\" style=\"\">\n\t\t<div class=\"container\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"last-updated-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t<h6 class=\"section-title small\">Last Updated<\/h6>\n\t\t\t\t<p class=\"date small\">June 22, 2021<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,20,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public-health-pandemics","category-animal-welfare","category-food-policy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}