Generally, I look forward to the Sunday edition of GPS hosted by commentator Fareed Zakaria.  His incisive comments and world perspective are reinforced by the quality and prestige of his guests.  On Sunday, May 10th these included ex-Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair and ex-Secretary of the Treasury and Harvard University, President Emeritus, Larry Summers, among others discussing the world and the U.S. in a post-COVID-19 era.    The jarring portion came at the end of the program with his individual perspective on emerging potential pandemics and their causation.  He is right in implicating global warming in the extension of vector-borne diseases including Zika, Malaria, Dengue and Chikungunya.  Warmer weather in northern latitudes has facilitated propagation of mosquitos and other insects that transmit viral and protozoal diseases.  As a veterinary student in the Republic of South Africa in 1963, Bluetongue was the most common seasonal infection among sheep, although suppressed by vaccination.  Today a variant of this disease occurs in Scandinavia and Northern Germany as warmer weather has allowed breeding and dissemination of viruses by Culicoides midges that now range from the Mediterranian region northwards to previously colder climes.

Fareed Zakaria

Where Zakaria and most observers differ is his implication based on biased and distorted information regarding domestic livestock as a factor in the emergence of new zoonotic infections.  SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 are caused by coronaviruses derived from bats as reservoirs of diverse species.  Trade and consumption of exotic animals held, slaughtered and sold in wet markets in Asia, is believed to be the source of emerging infections.  There is no evidence that domestic livestock in China or any other nation was responsible for COVID-19.  Quoting authors with an obvious bias against intensive livestock production, Zakaria maintained that “crowding” of animals contributes to human disease.  This is totally wrong.  Mortality rates due to diseases in poultry, hogs, and cattle are effectively controlled using vaccination and biosecurity under intensive management.  It is noted that the current Eastern European and Asian panzootic of African swine fever mostly involves small family-operated units. Large integrated hog operations mount effective prevention programs applying biosecurity, even in the absence of a vaccine.  The 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic was caused by a virus which incorporated genetic contributions from birds, hogs, and humans.  The disease affected 500 million, approximately a third of the world’s population at the time, and was responsible for as many as 50 million fatalities.  This infection emerged and spread half a century before the development of an intensive livestock industry.

The second canard in the May 10th GPS program involved the role of intensive livestock production in the emergence of antibiotic resistance.  It is a matter of record that the EU and the U.S have effectively banned antibiotics for routine administration to stimulate growth or improve feed conversion efficiency.  In most industrialized countries, antibiotics are restricted to prescription by Veterinarians using Prudent Use Principles.  Even China will ban the routine use of antibiotics in livestock production in 2021, although given the history of this nation, enforcement will be questionable.  The problem of emerging antibiotic resistance is a complex issue involving misuse of compounds by the medical profession and indiscriminate availability in both industrialized and almost all developing nations, over and above the possible origin in livestock.  An exception may well be the emergence in Asia, possibly from numerous small hog farms of the mcr-1 gene. This imparts resistance to antibiotics and is disseminated on plasmids among a number of bacterial pathogens.  The major conditions associated with drug-resistant infections in human populations include tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and nosocomial (hospital related), Staphylococcus, and Klebsiella infections.  None of these infections have any relation to livestock.

It is indeed unfortunate that credible and informed commentators, such as Fareed Zakaria, continue to reinforce negative perceptions of intensive livestock production with misstatements accompanied by inappropriate visual images without recognizing that zoonoses and antibiotic resistance are multifactorial in origin. While condemning intensive livestock production detractors fail to consider the contribution to protein requirements for a burgeoning world population.