It is absolutely crucial to have important dialogue that can create mass positive change.
Earthling Ed is a vegan educator, public speaker and content creator.
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On March 15, I uploaded a post to my Instagram that stated COVID-19 was caused because we eat animals.
The now-censored Instagram post
The post gained a lot of traction - including from people who believed that
the post was wrong, and that the consumption of non-human animals had
nothing to do with the current coronavirus pandemic.
USA Today
The traction on the post led to a journalist reaching out to me from USA
Today who asked me to provide supplementary evidence for my claims, as he
was going to run a 'fact checking' piece on my post.
After providing the requested information, the article was then published,
and my claims were rated 'partly false' and my Instagram post was censored
as a result.
Animal exploitation and zoonotic diseases
However, the article itself does little to disprove the post, in fact
overall it provides more evidence to support the post and backs up what I
say by providing further examples to reinforce the argument that the
exploitation of animals increases the risk of zoonotic diseases being passed
to humans.
Before we delve into the article itself, it’s important to first look at the
rating criteria to understand why such an evaluation was given. USA Today
offers four different evaluations, these are:
A small discrepancy
As such, to receive a 'partly false' verdict requires there to only be a
small discrepancy in the eyes of the journalist.
The main problem here is that even though the verdict logically implies the
post is either partially or almost entirely true, it also implies that there
is little merit to the claim the post makes.
By allowing people to believe it is somewhat false, this can prevent an
important discussion and allows for censorship to occur.
Furthermore, as you are able to see the verdict without reading the article
itself, this immediately creates a negative impression of the post to anyone
who sees it and discredits the information in the post, even though the
overarching argument put forward in the post ultimately isn’t disproved or
even necessarily disagreed with in the article.
Context
To give credit, USA Today not only reached out to me but they included a
significant portion of what I had responded with in the beginning of the
article. They also cite the World Health Organisation to support what I had
stated regarding zoonotic diseases and also antibiotic resistance.
These quotes from my email correspondence with them are important because
they clearly show that I have never stated that all zoonotic disease
originate from animal exploitation and they also show that I also did not
claim that it was the physical consumption of animals that caused COVID-19
to be passed to humans.
Instead it was because 'the exploitation of animals creates environments
where the likelihood of spillovers occurring is significantly increased, and
if we weren't using animals for food we wouldn't have created situations
where many of these diseases, including the latest coronavirus, were passed
to humans'.
Animal exploitation
The article then goes on to say: “Zoonotic diseases happen when humans and
animals are near each other. Common activities that can cause human-animal
interaction include farming, hunting, ranching and keeping animals as pets.
Human-animal contact is also heightened when humans encroach on wild lands.”
The journalist here cites four of the primary reasons why non-human to human
interaction occurs, and all four of them exist because of animal
exploitation.
If we didn’t exploit animals then by default we wouldn’t farm, hunt or ranch
them, and the pet industry would also cease to exist as we would be living
by the ‘adopt to shop’ philosophy.
Bear in mind also that the proliferation of zoonotic disease through the pet
industry is linked to the incarceration of wild animals as pets and the
global market for trading wildlife.
Furthermore, one of the leading causes of encroachment on wild lands is
animal agriculture, due to it involving vast amounts of habitat destruction.
The most comprehensive analysis ever conducted exploring farming and the
environment concluded that a shift to a plant based diet would free up 75
percent of global agricultural land. Land that could then be re-wilded and
would ultimately reduce human encroachment onto wild lands.
Diseases and citations
The article goes on to say that 'most of the diseases cited in the graphic
arose in conditions where animals were being hunted or raised for human
consumption'. The journalist then incidentally fails to mention which ones
didn’t. Below is a list of all the zoonotic diseases I listed with a
citation.
USA Today then add further evidence to support my claim by listing the
Spanish flu from 1918 as another example of a pandemic that was traced back
to animal farming. The Spanish flu incidentally killed 50 million people and
is regarded as one of the worst pandemics of all time.
Rebuttals
It’s at this point the article then proceeds to try and provide rebuttals to
my post. It starts by saying, 'many zoonotic diseases, however, are not the
result of human farming of animals'.
This is disingenuous as I was quoted at the start of the article making that
very same point myself, so to factor that into the article and into the
reasoning for the final verdict is misleading and irresponsible, especially
considering my original post never made the claim that all zoonotic diseases
could be traced back to animal exploitation.
Irrelevant
Their next point is, “there are a handful of food-borne parasitic diseases
that one can only get from eating undercooked or raw pork so if you stopped
eating pork altogether, you’d never need worry about any of those,” said Dr.
Stephen Felt, a professor of comparative medicine at Stanford University
Medical Center.
“But certainly, for zoonotic agents not transmitted through ingestion of
infected meat, it would be difficult to claim with any certainty that the
occurrence of these diseases would be reduced if humans began to consume
less animal products,” Felt added.
Again, this is irrelevant to the argument I am putting forward. My argument
has never been that all of these diseases are caused by the physical
consumption of animals, but instead that exploiting animals creates
environments where these spillovers are significantly more likely to happen.
This argument is illustrated by the fact that viruses such as COVID-19 and
SARS originated from wet markets, where the virus was passed to humans from
animals because those animals were there to be eaten.
'Obviously outrageous'
To brush this point aside is to claim that it is mere a coincidence that the
virus originated from these markets and that the probability of a spillover
would have been the same even if the markets didn’t exist, which is
obviously outrageous.
The chance of a bat coming into close contact with a pangolin, who then
comes into close contact with a human, would be so infinitesimally small if
we didn’t exploit both of these animals in the first place, thereby creating
an environment where close contact between all three species is created.
The journalist himself even concedes this point by stating: "It is
impossible to determine whether COVID-19 would have arisen without the
existence of the wet markets or settings like it, but it is true that such
markets supply the conditions for such diseases to arise and infect humans."
Deeply flawed thinking
However, this is where the foundation of the 'partly false' verdict comes,
as although it is undeniable that the proliferation of animal exploitation
has caused these problems, it can’t be entirely ruled out that such an
occurrence wouldn’t happen, even if the likelihood is tiny.
This way of thinking is deeply flawed though, as I could claim that there
isn’t a 25ft giant extraterrestrial standing on the surface of Venus and by
the same logic you would have to rule that statement as 'partly false' as
well, because of course there is an infinitesimally small chance that there
actually is.
So then the final rebuttal is that: "Reducing human contact with animals,
however, is likely the most effective way to lower the risk of transferring
pandemic-causing viruses and bacteria to humans from animal populations.”
However, I would say that even that point adds more veracity to my original
claim, as farming 56 billion land animals every year exponentially increases
the amount of non-human animal to human contact.
Furthermore, the argument of veganism being a preventive measure is actually
the same as the argument about reducing contact, as the reason veganism
would work in reducing these diseases isn’t just about stopping the physical
consumption, it’s more about stopping the environments where contact between
animals and humans occurs.
So in essence the main rebuttal to the post is actually the same as the main
argument for the post, which is that reducing contact is the best measure
for reducing zoonotic disease.
Censored
Ultimately, using the most up to date information, what we know is that
COVID-19 started in a wet market where animals were being traded for food.
If people didn’t eat animals then that wet market wouldn’t exist. If the wet
market didn’t exist then COVID-19 would not have been transferred to humans.
In the end the post has been regarded as 'partly false'. However, the real
problem lies in the censorship that this verdict has created. If a user had
to read the article before seeing the verdict this would be less problematic
as the article itself, although it includes fallacies, also substantiates my
argument as well.
The real issue is that now when someone sees the post all they see is the
the post contains 'partly false' information, and although they have the
choice to click through to read the article, many won’t and will instead
form their opinion on that statement alone.
Stifling debate
This has ultimately stifled open public debate, which irrespective of any
individual's feelings towards the post, is a dangerous and unfortunate
thing.
Especially considering the post is not promoting a conspiracy theory and
cites experts such as the WHO, the FAO and OIE and the journalist who
provided the verdict even put forward further examples to support the
argument presented by my post, even stating, 'it is true that such markets
supply the conditions for such diseases to arise and infect humans'.
In times of crisis, it's important that we discuss how to prevent something
similar from happening again in the future and so this might well be an
uncomfortable truth, but it’s an uncomfortable truth that could save
millions of human and non-human lives throughout the future.
So let’s hope that this conversation can keep going, as it is absolutely
crucial, now more than ever, to have important dialogue that can create mass
positive change for both humans and non-humans alike.
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
0 marine animals
0 chickens
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0 pigs
0 rabbits
0 turkeys
0 geese
0 sheep
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0 cows / calves
0 rodents
0 pigeons/other birds
0 buffaloes
0 dogs
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0 horses
0 donkeys and mules
0 camels / camelids