By Jessica Scott-Reid
Jessica is a Canadian writer, animal advocate and plant-based food expert. Her work appears regularly in media across Canada and the US.
The COVID-19 pandemic, says MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, has been an “incredibly tragic crisis” in terms of loss of human life as well as economic loss, “that none of us wants to live through again.” To help Canada become better positioned to prevent future pandemics, the Toronto area Liberal MP has drafted Bill C-293, the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act.
At its core, the Bill takes a One Health approach, which recognizes that “human health, animal health, and environmental health are all deeply interconnected,” he explains, adding that if we don’t take that seriously, “we are going to see pandemics in the future in a way that we really not ought to.”
“Any time we have an interaction between animals and humans we ought to be considering the pandemic risks”
— Nathaniel Erskine-Smith.
According to the World Health Organization, “One Health is an integrated, unifying approach to balance and optimize the health of people, animals and the environment.” This approach, it continues, “is particularly important to prevent, predict, detect, and respond to global health threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic.”
That’s because, among the many factors that have been identified by experts as contributors to pandemic risk, “the United Nations Environment Programme made it very clear,” says Erskine-Smith, “increased demand for animal protein is one of those drivers.”
In fact, “increasing demand for animal protein" and “unsustainable agricultural intensification” are listed as first and second respectively, in UNEP’s list of top seven drivers of disease, in its 2020 Preventing the Next Pandemic report. “Unsurprisingly,” the report notes, “the vast majority of animals involved in historic zoonotic events or current zoonosis are domestic (livestock, domesticated wildlife and pets), which is logical as the contact rates are high.”
Since the late 19th century, the world has seen nine pandemics resulting from zoonotic diseases, meaning passed from animals to humans, including Bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease, H5N1 or bird flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome aka SARS, H1N1 or swine flu, and more, some of which resulted in mass human and animal death. And these kinds of pandemics continue to be a threat. A new report shows that bird flu and related culling has killed 140 million poultry globally since October 2021, according to the World Organization for Animal Health.
Photo: Milos Bicanski, We Animals Media
American physician and author of the book Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, Dr. Michael Greger, explained to Vox.com in 2020, “When we overcrowd animals by the thousands, in cramped football-field-size sheds, to lie beak to beak or snout to snout, and there’s stress crippling their immune systems, and there’s ammonia from the decomposing waste burning their lungs, and there’s a lack of fresh air and sunlight—put all these factors together and you have a perfect-storm environment for the emergence and spread of disease.“
“The less we care about animal health,” adds Erskine-Smith, “—if we have sick animals, and we are over-using antibiotics and keeping animals in unsanitary conditions—this will ultimately lead to tragic consequences not only for those animals, but it may well lead to tragic consequences for human health as well.”
“If you actually want to create global pandemics, then build factory farms”
— Dr. Michael Greger.
And so, Bill C-293 asks in part, that after consultation with the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, that the Minister of Industry and provincial governments provide measures to “regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture,” as well as “promote commercial activities that can help reduce pandemic risk, including the production of alternative proteins.” This would involve a review, Erskine-Smith explains, potentially of things like biosecurity measures and antibiotic use in industrialized farms, worker conditions in slaughterhouses, etc.
While the MP does not want to presume what the outcome of such a review might be, he does consider it “massively important that we identify, based on the expert international literature, that zoonotic diseases are the main pandemic risk we ought to address,” and to recognize “that anytime we have an interaction between animals and humans we ought to be considering the pandemic risks and how do we reduce those risks.” Because, he adds, as of right now, beyond the issue of anti-microbial resistance, “we are not seriously looking at our biosecurity measures from a pandemic risk perspective.”
Cultivated meat production facility. Photo: Upside Foods
The production and promotion of alternative proteins as a means to help cut pandemic risk, is the obvious next step in this process. “If the increased demand for animal protein is a contributing driver of pandemic risk […] then how do we address that fact? One is to make sure we are regulating activities from a biosecurity perspective. And the second is to ask how we can create alternatives to meet that demand that don’t create the same pandemic risk?”
The answer, he says, “could be plant-based alternatives and cell-ag alternatives.” Encouraging the government to promote lower-risk alternatives, asserts Erskine-Smith, is not only important, but also likely more useful, as supporting one industry will always be easier than regulating another.
The Bill also proposes reviews of commercial activities involving high-risk species that disproportionately contribute to pandemic risk (e.g., mink farming which contributes little to the economy, but as we’ve seen presents immense pandemic risk). Also, the displacement of wildlife due to deforestation, causing more unnatural animal-animal interactions, as well as the global wildlife trade and live markets.
Mink farm in Quebec. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur, #Make Fur History, We Animals Media
The latter, Erskine-Smith notes, is a global challenge, and says that the risk of disease spillover from live markets leading to disease spread into other countries requires serious consideration. “The economic value of a live animal market [whether abroad or in Canada] is so small in comparison to the human and economic toll of a pandemic. So it’s ultimately up to international efforts to either phase them out or ensure there are really stringent regulations.”
Bill C-293 was first debated in November and will come up for second debate in the spring. If it gains enough support to make it to committee for study, Erskine-Smith says he is hopeful it will be further improved with the help of experts, before then being put into action. “It would put Canada in a leadership position in terms of accountability to Parliament for pandemic prevention and preparedness,” he says.
If you think this is an important Bill, contact your MP and ask them to support Bill C-293.