The Secret Weapon Against Pandemics That Nobody Wants to Talk About
[Music]
[Applause]
there’s a reason why
i have to deliver this talk remotely
there’s a reason why i haven’t been able
to address a real audience in person
for almost a year there’s a reason why i
currently can’t visit a hairdresser and
sort out this
mess what there seems to be no reason
for however
is the fact that one of the most
effective ways in which we can
drastically reduce the chances
of another debilitating pandemic from
occurring again
is seemingly being ignored or at least
isn’t present in the public
consciousness
we’re still not entirely sure about the
origins of covid19 it’s generally
thought to have migrated to us from a
bat in china
but this virus is only one example of a
type of disease
called a zoonotic disease a zoonotic
disease
is one which originates in non-human
animals but develops the ability to
transmit from those other species
to human beings if we ever need a
reminder of our place in nature
not as the untouchable lords of the
animal kingdom as
many humans see themselves but as
animals ourselves
who are just as susceptible to the
trials and tragedies of the natural
order as
any other species on planet earth we can
find it in the humbling force with which
a zoonotic disease can
in the blink of an eye come to devastate
us so surprisingly
and so severely that it threatens our
very existence
since the outbreak of covid19 there have
been seemingly endless efforts to
prevent something like it from ever
happening again
but something is being overlooked like a
discussion about
lung cancer that omits mention of
smoking or a discussion about pollution
that ignores the transportation industry
the conversation surrounding pandemic
prevention currently has a dangerous and
gaping
blind spot that i cannot believe isn’t
getting more attention
covert 19 thankfully looks like it soon
will become a thing of the past
but we still face a very real risk of
more pandemics
happening again in the future here’s
what i’m here to convince you of
if we genuinely want to reduce our risk
of zoonotic diseases developing
and potentially causing more pandemics
we simply cannot continue to ignore
the elephant in the room or more
accurately
the pig or the cow or the chicken on the
factory farm
the vast majority of animal products
that we consume that’s
meat but also dairy and eggs comes from
factory farms
many people know of the ethical horrors
of animals being confined and harmed
within these disgusting facilities
but not so many people know that an
unintended consequence
of housing the animals we unnecessarily
farm for food
in such close proximity such high
numbers and such
outrageously unhygienic conditions as
are present in factory farms
is an explosion in the likelihood that
an animal-based virus
will mutate into one with zoonotic
abilities that is
one that spreads to humans factory farms
are our principal source of animal-based
foods
but they’re also breeding grounds for
these kinds of viruses and pose a severe
threat
to public health and human well-being
that simply cannot continue to be
overlooked
to understand why we have to first
unpack what exactly is
a factory farm factory farms are
profit-driven
large-scale industrialized engines of
animal cruelty
their primary motive in farming animals
is not the ethical treatment of these
inmates
it’s not environmental sustainability
and is certainly not a provision
of acceptable hygiene standards factory
farms exist
solely to make as much money as possible
from the exploitation of animals
and unfortunately ethical environmental
and public health considerations
only serve as a roadblock in the way of
increasing profit margins
and so were completely neglected by
these farms factory farms are a
relatively new
experiment in animal agriculture only
really arising in the 20th century when
the discovery of vitamins
and the development of antibiotics
allowed animals to be kept
indoors in close proximity and in far
greater numbers
than previously possible and this leads
to the familiar and horrifying images of
chickens crammed into barns pigs and
cows in cages so small that they can’t
turn around
and the slaughter of these animals to
the tune of around 210 million
per day not including fish by the way
who are slaughtered
in the billions per day around 7.5
billion human beings are currently alive
on planet earth
we kill that many land animals alone
every 36 days and that’s just for food
not including animals killed for other
purposes like clothing
and not even including sea life at all
animal suffering doesn’t just permeate
our food and our clothing by the way
animal suffering is everywhere we know
that it’s in our food and in our
clothing
but it’s also in our furniture our
sports our medicine and our cosmetics
it’s in british currency alcohol
backpacks
violins guitar straps bibles tires
blankets phone cases wallets
and even fireworks you might be
currently listening to this talk
while sat on the skin of a dead cow the
only place that i can think of
where animal suffering is truly nowhere
to be found
is in the moral consideration of the
average human being
it’s worth thinking about this the next
time you hear someone accusing vegans
of being the pushy or forceful ones i
promise you that i have to encounter
animal products
far more than you have to encounter a
vegan complaining about them now in case
you don’t already share
my ethical intuition that factory farms
are in urgent need of abolition
allow me to describe some of their
common operations starting
with cows cows only produce milk for
their offspring just like human beings
do
and so it’s standard practice in the
dairy industry to forcibly impregnate
cows
so they’ll start producing milk but when
their calves are born as a result of
this
those calves will want to drink their
mother’s milk and so it’s also standard
practice
to forcibly separate the calf from their
mother
so that the milk can be redirected for
human consumption
i’m sure i don’t need to explain to you
the psychological stress
involved in being forcibly separated
from your children
but at least these mother cows don’t
know what will happen to their stolen
calves
in the united kingdom seventy thousand
of these calves
are killed in their early life each year
to produce veal
for human beings to eat that mother cow
will by the way
continue to go through this cycle of
exploitation until she can no longer
produce milk
at which point the thanks we give her
for her services
is to sell her to a slaughterhouse where
she’ll be bolted in the head
or sliced in the throat so that we can
enjoy a big mac
now let’s talk about chickens the
chickens bred on the farms that produce
our food
are separated into two distinct breeds
broiler chickens who produce chicken
meat
and layer chickens who lay eggs now
these are separate operations it’s not
the same chickens who produce the meat
and the eggs that we eat they come from
these two different breeds
now because of this it’s a common
misconception that the egg industry
isn’t responsible for chicken deaths but
this is
unfortunately untrue think about those
leia chickens
of course male chickens don’t lay eggs
and are therefore useless
as layers and because of this the egg
industry
kills around seven billion of these male
chicks
every single year seven billion that’s
like wiping out nearly every human being
currently alive on planet earth
every single year for the sake of an
omelet
and these chicks are killed either by
suffocating them in large bags
grinding them up alive in an industrial
macerator
or they are in the words of the british
egg information service
humanely gassed they’re also killed as
soon as they’re born so both their first
and last experience of this world
is terror and suffering caused only by
the fact
that we like to eat their products and
this chick culling occurs in
all industrialized egg production
including i’m afraid to report
free range and organic farms as for pigs
these poor trusting creatures often
begin their lives by having their tails
cut off and their teeth
pulled out without anesthetic to prevent
them from cannibalizing each other later
in life
when these intelligent creatures are
driven to insanity
by the unthinkable conditions we trap
them in for most of their lives
if these piglets are considered to be
unusable or unprofitable
and they’re often killed immediately
using so-called
blunt force trauma whereby a farmer
takes the piglet by their back legs
and smashes their head into the ground
killing the piglet
by the force of the floor against its
skull
and this is a method which the canadian
pork council describes as
humane pig euthanasia but maybe these
pigs who die
early are the lucky ones in the uk
the most common method for slaughtering
pigs who make it to adulthood for food
is by forcing them into a gas chamber
the last moment
of these animals tragic lives are spent
writhing around
in confused agony trapped in a cage
that’s been lowered into a chamber of
carbon dioxide
wherein after a lifetime of suffering
they’re finally choked to death
and for what all for the sake of a bacon
sandwich
clearly with regards to our treatment of
non-human animals
we are in need of an ethical revolution
a revival of the animal loving spirit
that we’re all born with
you don’t need to teach a child to love
animals
you need to teach them to stop and we
teach our children from their earliest
years
to view farm animals as commodities with
which
we can do as we please instead of
sentient beings
with whom we share the world the love of
animals
is not something that’s learned it’s
something that’s lost
when was the last time you needed to
teach someone to think that
dogs shouldn’t be tortured and killed
for food
rediscovering our love and respect for
animals
is not a process of learning anything
new but unlearning the moral status
that we’ve unjustifiably placed upon
these animals just to make our food
production more convenient
by refusing to fund factory farming by
drinking
oat or soy milk instead of cow’s milk by
cooking a chickpea curry
instead of a beef one by starting your
day with oats
instead of bacon you can be a part of
this ethical
revival helping animals to no longer go
through this immeasurable suffering
and helping yourself to no longer be a
part of its cause
simply choosing something else on the
menu is
all we need to do to bring this horror
show to an end
it’s such an insignificant thing for us
to do
but it means absolutely everything to
the animal that you save
from being forced into that gas chamber
but i started this talk by asserting
that this kind of ethical revolution
doesn’t just solve this massive moral
problem but also helps to solve
our pandemic problem it’s clear that
factory farms are ethical abominations
but
what has any of this this talk of
factory farming
got to do with public health with
pandemics
well to be clear the pandemic that we’re
currently facing
was not caused by factory farming
but the next one might well be and
that’s the danger
when we understand how zoonotic viruses
like covid19
work it becomes easy to see that factory
farms play a
huge role in increasing the risk that
more of these viruses
will materialize in the future viruses
like the coronavirus
are parasites and they’re nearly alive
they have their own dna or rna
but are generally not considered to be
fully fledged living things
since they can’t survive without a host
a host
is simply an organism which viruses can
infect
and use to replicate themselves and
increase their population
so in order to replicate in this manner
viruses have to infect the cells of
other living beings
who serve as the viruses host now this
host
carrying a virus may be a mosquito or it
may be a pig
it may be a cow or it may be a human
being
a virus will jump from one host to
another
any time it gets the chance to and the
more hosts
that there are available the more
transmissions can occur but as a virus
replicates
it sometimes mutates when the virus
copies itself the copy is an
imperfect one with some kind of small
difference now these mutations are
completely random
but sometimes a mutation happens to
occur that gives the virus a new ability
that aids its survival
such as for example the ability to
transmit
not just from one animal to another but
from one species of animal
to another remember when this kind of
transmission occurs
specifically from a non-human animal to
a human being
we have a zoonotic disease covert 19 is
an example of a zoonotic disease
as is bird flu ebola malaria
and swine flu some of the most famous
and dangerous viruses that we know of
now picture again the factory farm the
barns
full of animals packed together in their
tens
of billions per year if these animals
are carrying a virus
this translates into tens of billions of
potential hosts
every year the more hosts the more
random mutations
and the more mutations the higher the
chance of the virus
developing into a zoonotic disease with
the ability to transmit to humans
so by keeping so many animals in the
excruciatingly close conditions
of factory farms the chances of such a
zoonotic disease developing
explodes if you were trying to create
the most dangerous conditions possible
for viral replication within animals
if you were trying to bring about a new
zoonotic pandemic
you couldn’t wish for something more
suitable than a modern factory farm
as josh bulk of the united states humane
society has said
whilst our governments are telling us to
keep our distance and avoid large crowds
to prevent viral transmission
we’re simultaneously cramming tens of
thousands of animals
wall-to-wall inside giant factories and
failing to recognize the risks
or at least choosing to ignore them so
where does this all leave us
well i’m hoping that it should be clear
by now that factory farming simply
needs to come to an end not only will
this allow us to bring about a
blossoming of our ethical concern for
those we share this planet with
but it will also help us to fight
against the risk of a repetition of the
horrors
that we’ve had a taste of with covid19
every single time just one animal dies
inside these ignoble factories it makes
a mockery of the claim that we’re a
society of animal lovers
and when we scale this abuse up to the
level that we see in factory farms
and continue to pay for their operations
to continue
it rebuts any claim any claim that we’re
doing
everything we can to combat the risk of
future pandemics
the solution to this problem is so
incredibly simple
that future generations will look back
with astonishment
that it took us so long to work it out
all we need to do
to bring about an end to this
nightmarish industry
is eat something else choose something
else on the menu
if we can all manage this simple task we
can collectively move towards a world
much safer much healthier and much more
ethically consistent
than the world of today even if it were
just for the sake of the animals
who were currently suffering and dying
as i speak these words
that would be more than a good enough
reason alone to stop eating animal
products
but as it turns out it’s not just in
their best interest for us to stop doing
so
it’s in our best interest too thanks for
listening
you