The relationship between humans and animals has never been as skewed as it is now. The dominance of the one over the other is absolute. Animals are slaughtered and exploited at an eye-popping rate. Now, with the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, humans really need to now fundamentally address their exploitative relationship with the animal world.
Humans have delegitimized animals to such an extent that we view them as being “farmed.” The conditions of factory farms are notoriously bad. Disease is prevalent. Antibiotics and steroids, fed to the animals to make them as profitable as possible, are being copiously used and then consumed by humans. Factory farms really are ticking time bombs for health – for humans as well as the animal victims.
Given that the Coronavirus outbreak likely originated from a so-called “wet market” of live, exotic animals, held in miserable conditions akin to a factory farm, it time to now call time on factory farming, period.
How many pennies must drop before humanity wakes up to the fact it’s relationship with animals has to change? We have had bird ‘flu, swine ‘flu, “mad cow disease”, and animal related SARS and Ebola. And now a fully-fledged global pandemic with Coronavirus, with all the pointers showing that it was animal to human transmission that caused the problem at source.
The economic and social dislocation of the Coronavirus outbreak will be felt for generations to come. Humanity can ill-afford to continue playing with animal fire as the potential health repercussions, as we are seeing with the Coronavirus, are becoming ever more dangerous.
Ethically, factory farms are an abomination and should be done away with on that basis. On top of that, they now represent a significant threat to human health. How long before another animal-based disease makes the leap across species and hits us as hard as the Coronavirus pandemic has done?
