Juggling Dynamite

Coronavirus is far from the only ‘zoonosis’, or disease spread by animals; many millions are affected globally by others every year.  For a helpful big picture review from the UK Telegraph see Diseases jumping from animals to humans is not new–it has long been deadly, but we can learn from it:

If you thought that a disease jumping from an animal to a person and going on to cause global mayhem was something of a freak incident, then think again.

From bubonic plague to Ebola to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), there is a non-human creature at the root of many of history’s pandemics and major disease outbreaks – in these cases the creature ‘culprits’ being, in order, a rat, a bat, a civet cat and a camel.

HIV/AIDS, for which we are still awaiting a vaccine, has its roots in human interaction with primates. Spanish influenza, which killed an estimated 50 million people in 1918-19, is now believed to have originated in wild fowl. And swine and avian influenzas speak for themselves.

Further to yesterday’s article Non-animal food:  here to stay, and my July 2 article Rethinking Canada during the greatest recession, Tony Seba’s group ReThinx has published a worthwhile update on the technological disruption now transforming status quo thinking and systems globally.

The chapter on Food and Agriculture is important, you can download it here for free.
They explain that we are on the cusp of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruption of agriculture in history–might as well understand and benefit from it.

Growing animals to feed nearing 8 billion humans was not ecologically sustainable before the COVID-19 outbreak, now, the spreading realization that most epidemics cross to humans from animals is another factor accelerating appetite for alternative food sources.

An explosion of plant-based chefs and recipes are showing more people every week that non-animal diets can be extraordinarily delicious and healthy. In the United States, plant milk sales grew 61% from 2012 to 2018.^[26] Oat milk sales increased by 250% in Canada during 2019 alone.^[27]

For those still open to highly processed foods, plant-based meats have also been rapidly gaining market share. Lab-grown meats are an offering for those who can’t imagine not eating animal flesh. All of these options are the future of food. See Cell-based meat benefits include, helping save our future, advocates say:

By now you’ve likely heard about the concept: “clean” meat, they call it. A small sample of stem cells is taken from a cow or a chicken, and those cells are cultivated to make edible meat, without having to raise or slaughter an animal to acquire it. If you’re already on board with this idea, you’re part of a growing appetite for cell-based meat. If you’re still iffy, get ready to “Meat the Future.”That’s the name of a documentary that follows Memphis Meats, one of the players in the rapidly growing industry of cell-based meat. Memphis Meats is in a race to perfect its product and replicate the look, feel texture and taste of animal-harvested meat and bring it to your plate at a reasonable price. Here is a direct video link.