Infectious disease is tied to the health of animals, humans and non-human animals,
and it would be rather silly to imagine you could create a healthy system filled with sick animals surrounded by humans you're trying to protect.
In the same way, it would be silly to imagine, you know,
having a bunch of people with coronavirus walking around and then trying to put a group right in the middle of that and protect them from it.
You need to worry about everyone.
About a year ago, the Guardian published an opinion article by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer and Professor Aaron Gross entitled We Have to Wake Up.
Factory farms are breeding grounds for pandemics. Can we really remain healthy when we know that around us, there are billions of animals,
genetically uniform and healthy animals crammed together in factory farms and cattle in the
folded from the Oxford You Hero Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford.
In this interview, I talk to one of the authors of the Guardian opinion article, Aaron Gross,
who is a professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego and the founder of Farm Forward,
a non-profit organisation which works to improve animal welfare on farms and to end factory farming.
How worried should we be? I often find myself previously discussing this two years ago in the position, saying it's time to get alarmed,
but now I think we are alarmed, which is great, but we have to understand what we're facing.
And I think the challenges we're being alarmed in the wrong direction.
We're not recognising how much our farming system, our agricultural system really determines the kind of overall scale of our risk for four pandemics.
The data from the Centres for Disease Control is that three out of four emerging and new infectious diseases are what they call Zoo Nordic,
which means they're related to the illnesses that animals get.
So what this is really telling us to interpret that in a really simple way is infectious disease is tied to the health of animals,
humans and non-human animals.
And it would be rather silly to imagine you could create a healthy system filled with sick animals surrounded by humans you're trying to protect.
In the same way, it would be silly to imagine, you know,
having a bunch of people with coronavirus walking around and then trying to put a group right in the middle of that and protect them from it.
You need to worry about everyone.
And when we look at where new, dangerous viruses that didn't quite make it to the scale of coronavirus are coming from.
It's completely unambiguous. You know, it's like there is a variety of idiosyncratic places they emerge.
And then there's like the Silicon Valley of virus emergence, which is industrial, poultry and pig farming in particular.
It turns out that birds and humans have immune systems that are related in intricate ways, going way back.
So the thing is that birds get sick with we often get sick with and we pass diseases between each other more than other kinds of species do.
So, especially the poultry industry, is a concern.
So what's going on in the poultry industry? That might make it more worrisome than, you know, the way we eat chickens.
A hundred years ago, scale the quantity of animals in the U.S. context.
We now eat more than 100 times per capita, more than 100 times as much chicken as we did a century ago.
It doesn't take a lot of analysis to figure well if those chickens get sick.
And now in the US, we're dealing with nine billion far outweighs the human population.
Your opportunity for that virus to multiply know have grown accordingly.
I went to a coffee shop this afternoon and the person serving me was wearing her mask under her nose and I was like,
Oh no, it's not proper social distancing. So we're so worried about social distancing amongst each other, and rightly so.
Yeah, in time, like near us,
our billions of animals crammed together in these factory farms close to each other and close to the humans handling them.
And we and it's not on our radar, it's not on our radar because there's very powerful,
long standing political forces that do not want to see that discussion in the media.
And that's not that didn't occur all of a sudden, you know, there's a lot of problems associated with industrial agriculture.
We're talking about one of them the way it increases endemic risk.
But we're also dealing with an industry implicated in climate change, ecological pollution of all different kinds,
probably the greatest source of worker exploitation, at least in the US context.
So this is an industry under fire for lots of different reasons, and it has developed means of distraction.
This is why I'm emphasising some of these real basic human facts so that, you know you can just reason out for yourself.
I'm so worried about somebody's mask being a little bit more exposed.
Maybe a billion animals that, you know, are within a couple hundred miles of you,
if you're living where I live, you might want to also be on your radar.
So yeah, we've got this access to huge numbers of animals. And then as you alluded, we have created a system which packs them in greater densities.
So this is another risk factor. We've modified their genetics so that they are more genetically uniform.
Imagine if we bred everyone so that, you know, if one of us got coronavirus instantly, we all got it.
That's essentially what we've done with these birds and the pigs to a lesser extent and then to really, you know, make this a perfect dystopia.
We have methods that pretty much guarantee these animals are chronically sick.
I think most of us have some kind of vague awareness that the animals are eating today are not the robust,
healthy animals that we might imagine on a kind of traditional farm.
We really have a system that has made sick animals more profitable to sell than healthy animals.
It's a it really is a a perfect kind of petri dish to create pandemics.
I think many people who would want to get rid of factory farms just think, Well, this industry is so powerful.
I mean, how do we even start to change it?
Is there something that we, as individuals can do? I mean, if I become a vegetarian or a vegan,
but this these factory farms and keep on receiving the subsidies that their country receives that are paid with my tax money,
I don't even want to support them, but I'm doing it. I mean, does it even make sense for me to become?
I mean, I am a vegetarian, but suppose I wasn't going to become a vegetarian or is it?
No, I'll I mean, I think it's a very powerful statement for someone to say, I'm going to go vegetarian or I'm going to go vegan,
or I'm not going to eat from a poultry industry to make these kind of, you know,
broad commitments is something everyone around you will hear and know.
It has a certain kind of power that's hard to measure, but it's certainly independent of whatever outward influence it has.
It might be the way you need to live in the world to be kind of not contributing to the problem for for many of us, even if we can't,
even if I can't end racism, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be the one who's, you know, the white guy aggravating it.
All right. So that might be a reason not to support the current, you know, animal agriculture industry.
But but I agree that doesn't necessarily mean we have a political solution to ending the industry.
But that's the that's the basis for it in some ways, a critical mass of consumers saying, you know, I'm not going to support this industry.
It seems like it's going to be a precondition for more radical change.
This industry isn't like nebulous, powerful for some sort of mysterious reason.
You've got most people three times a day sending it funds.
And it's true that they get even more than that because there's a subsidy structure
there so that even if you withdraw your income from buying those products,
we haven't totally solved the problem, but we've definitely moved in that direction.
And companies pay careful attention to these numbers.
You know, increasing numbers of vegetarian and the population mean all of a sudden there becomes a market for,
you know, maybe something like, let's invent a burger that tastes like a burger, but it's made from plants, obviously.
You know, everyone knows this has been really big, big business.
You know, largest IPO in 2018 was, you know, beyond meat.
So those changes in consumer behaviour, those changes that you as an individual make don't sit and stay with you.
People are paying attention and those things, you know, RAM A.
But the second piece we need is not just kind of divesting ourself from, you know,
whatever we decide is beyond the pale, but communicating this politically that this has to be an issue.
So it's a matter of being unsatisfied with the politician who seems to address climate
change but won't talk about the substantial role that industrial agriculture plays in it.
And certainly, if we're talking about pandemics for all the reason, we've said,
if this is a political issue for you, as I think it should be for most of us.
Don't take seriously the politicians that are unwilling to go to animal agriculture,
what that will do is empower the politicians who are there right now who are trying to talk about this in the US for the first time,
we do have a piece of legislation proposing a moratorium on factory farming. It has no chance of passing right now.
This is the first time it even exists,
and it exists as a piece of federal legislation that when the political climate allows it to be possible to pass it, you know it will move forward.
You're saying, like for individuals, when they adapt their food choices, they should do what seems like the right thing to them.
And so I did two other interviews with a philosophers who are specialised in animal ethics and asked them, You know,
can you give some advice to people who want to do good with their food choices when it comes to preventing them?
That makes and is it said, well, you know, the first thing they should do is becoming a vegan.
And I think like, well, yeah, OK. But that's very demanding for many people.
What you said was like, Well, people should decide for themselves,
for themselves what what they think is reasonable to change more a step by step approach.
Maybe the truth is we can only really do what we're very committed to.
You know, so in some ways, it's just a fantasy.
If I think you should move in a certain way just to kind of imagine that that's going to be even if I have a great logical arguments behind me.
It's certainly not the way we make our, you know, our food choices. So I think it's good to listen to folks who are challenging us.
Why? Why does Peter Singer think I need to become a vegan to be basically ethical?
But even if we decide that even if we find upon thinking of it,
we agree in principle that our values are such that we really want to have nothing to do with
the current animal agriculture industry that doesn't extricate us from those human challenges.
You know, the way in which we are physiologically and culturally and socially tied to food, it's hard to give up.
And if we imagine that we have to, you know, immediately realise this kind of perfect ethical ideal, it will paralyse us.
And I think what most people experience is if you if you would, if you attend to these issues,
if you keep coming back to them with your own existing heart and your own existing values,
a lot of times it will provide motivation for you to give up animal products, you know.
And that can be a somewhat natural process.
There might be a little time you're like, OK, you know, for this week, I'm just going to make a decision, I'm going to do this.
And those kind of promises can be very helpful.
The premises I worry about when people are like, I must do X for the rest of my life or I will betray all of my values.
That seems like it tends to lead us in the wrong direction.
It becomes like an either or and you can't be in the in the middle somewhere or you're a hypocrites, or I'm quite sure I'm a hypocrite.
I mean, this is, it seems to me, the human, the human condition. We really try to minimise that minimisation is is a scale.
And I don't think we have to. I feel like by acknowledging that complexity of human decision making,
we are in any way diminishing the clarity of the fact that the current, you know,
the currently available animal products almost certainly violate your values,
almost whoever is watching this and that should give us pause and be a reason for reflection.
But that, you know, can manifest in different,
really different ways in terms of our different decision making and in terms of then how society decides to change the whole, the whole system.
A lot of people find it's really hard to make individual changes, but they can participate in communal changes quite easily.
That is, they just don't have the discipline to not eat that favourite food.
But if they're sitting there with their church group deciding whether they're going to make the next collective meal vegetarian or not,
they're ready to sign up with a meal that would be more value based.
Other other people find it very easy to be very strict personally,
but have no patience for the compromises and debates that you have to have in community.
So I think there's really space for all the different kinds of human dispositions.
If you could give some advice to individuals who are watching and who want to do something,
some change to their food choices to help prevent future pandemics.
What would you say to them? Yeah. I mean, being an ambassador for the connexion between animal agriculture and pandemics,
knowing that and being, you know, communicative about it would be my number one suggestion.
And then, yeah, if reducing animal products is the most straightforward way to divest yourself from those systems to asking yourself,
Where can I change my defaults? Do I really prefer cows milk to soy milk?
Or maybe that's an easy switch. And, you know, focussing on what you can do easily at first and then, you know, have a conversation with yourself.
But I think kind of in some ways, I guess my final suggestion, we recognise that the question of what you eat and what your community eats is a great,
you know, moral adventure and can be a great culinary adventure.
At the same time, it's really a powerful place. We can become the people we want to be and create the world we we want to create.
And almost whatever you do, once you realise that is likely to be, you're making the world a better place.
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