How Can We Prevent the Next Zoonotic Disease Outbreak?
12.07.2024 - 19:17
/ modernfarmer.com
For some, reports of a deadly new virus spreading across the planet seemingly came out of nowhere last year. But the emergence of COVID-19 didn’t shock the epidemiologists and researchers who study zoonotic diseases, the kinds of diseases that jump from animals to humans.
“The fact that a bat coronavirus emerged to cause a human pandemic surprised no one in my field,” says zoonotic disease expert Tony Goldberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. “What surprised everyone, though, was how ill-prepared we were to handle it and how quickly it became political. We knew some novel zoonosis was coming, but we flubbed the response anyway.”
Now, researchers are coming out of the current pandemic with new thoughts on how we can prevent the next one—because there will be a next one. Many experts agree that it’s a question of when, not if, there will be another zoonotic disease outbreak. Agriculture is a key industry to monitor for such pathogens, as it is often urbanization and agriculture that drive large-scale land-use change, threatening biodiversity and driving humans, wildlife and farmed animals into closer contact with each other.
Zoonotic diseases are more common than one might realize. Ebola, SARS, MERS, and Zika are just some of the ones that have emerged over the last century. There are several ways these diseases can jump from animal to human, including direct or indirect contact, through a vector such as a tick or insect, as well as eating or drinking something contaminated with a foodborne illness.
While the risk of some foodborne zoonoses, such as salmonella or E. coli, can be eliminated by cooking foods properly, others proliferate in more devastating