Sras, H1N1 flu, and now the Covid-19… Zoonoses, infectious diseases that spread between vertebrate species, including humans, are appearing at an unprecedented rate worldwide.
There is only one species responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic: ours
, alarm the four presidents of IPBES (1), specialists in life. In an open letter to world leaders who wouldn’t have thought of reading their 2019 report, these scientists list the negative impacts of human activity: deforestation, pesticides, mining, urbanization, trafficking in protected species… At this rate, more than a million species of plants and animals will disappear from the face of the Earth or from the bottom of the oceans in the coming decades.
Our health is fundamentally linked to the health of ecosystems, to the diversity of living things
, remember Serge Morand, researcher at CNRS and CIRAD. Joined in Thailand, where he teaches parasitic ecology, he is ideally placed, in a Southeast Asia where the richness in biodiversity is threatened, to observe the emergence of new infectious diseases and the systems which favor them.
His studies, like those of FAO or Harvard in recent years, point to an intensive and globalized agricultural model, and more specifically animal production. Only 2% of wild vertebrates remain on Earth, the rest are livestock, domestic animals. We went from 4 billion chickens in 1960 to 25 billion in 2007.
Now, explains the ecologist, “A virus very rarely passes from its wild host, like the bat, to humans; he needs an animal bridge
, closer to humans. “
Civet, bird, pig … These animals are known. The best example is the swine flu H1N1 which started in a Mexican mega-farm (in 2009) or the Nipah virus, in Malaysia, in 1998, where bats, whose habitat was destroyed for the production of palm oil, have moved closer to pigs for export to Singapore
, traces Serge Morand.
According to veterinarian Manuelle Miller, from the NGO Agronomists and veterinarians without borders, integrated production systems of meat manufacturers
would also favor the transition from a localized infectious disease to a pandemic. On family farms, if a pig is infected, the animals are killed. And that often ends there. But when a large group crosses entire regions to distribute chicks of the same breed, with the same food, the same antibiotics, the contagion factors are multiplied.
Brazilian JBS, American Tyson, Chinese WH where the Dutch BigDutchman, no animal production manufacturer can do without the Asia-Pacific region: 60% of the world’s population lives there. The continent produces almost a third of poultry meat, six out of ten chicken eggs and half of the pigs in the world. All of this near the largest reservoir of potentially pathogenic microorganisms, bacteria and viruses on the planet.
These companies highlight their professionalism in health surveillance. This is their argument, notes specialist Serge Morand. But in reality, there is always a virus to get through the cracks.
(1) IPBES, the Intergovernmental Scientific and Political Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services is the equivalent of the IPCC, for the climate. Scientists commissioned by the United Nations.
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