ANIMAL TRANSMITTED DISEASES-A SCARY SCENARIO

The eternal divide between the herbivores and the omnivores is a fact of life and no matter what new information emerge, there will not be much of a change in the relative number of vegetarians and non-vegetarians that live in this world. That meat eating is not absolutely necessary for good health has been conclusively proven by health experts, further reinforced by the thriving community of people with enviable health conditions spread across the continent. The argument that man is designed to eat meat because of his lineage from the historical hunters depending on animals for survival, does not justify meat eating to day because of drastic evolutionary changes taking place through millions of years since human life started in this planet. Similarly the argument that large animals like Elephants thrive on plant foods alone also is also sustainable because each living creature's physiological and metabolic make up vary enormously defying comparison on any scale. Early eating habits set the food preferences of individuals and those who like animal derived foods should not be denied the pleasure of continuing to eat what they like. But a recent report by a scientific team studying the impact of animal foods on the disease front is a compelling document that deserves serious consideration by all countries. 

'A global study mapping human diseases that come from animals like tuberculosis, AIDS, bird flu or Rift Valley fever has found that just 13 such diseases are responsible for 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths a year. The vast majority of infections and deaths from so-called zoonotic diseases are in poor or middle-income countries, but "hot spots" are also cropping up in the United States and Europe where diseases are newly infecting humans, becoming particularly virulent, or are developing drug resistance. And exploding global demand for livestock products means the problem is likely to get worse, researchers said. "From cyst-causing tapeworms to avian flu, zoonoses present a major threat to human and animal health," said Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya and lead author of the study. She said targeting these diseases in the hardest hit countries is crucial to protecting global health, and failing to tackle them would allow demand for meat products to "fuel the spread of a wide range of human-animal infectious diseases." The study, conducted by the ILRI, the Institute of Zoology in Britain and the Hanoi School of Public Health in Vietnam, mapped livestock-keeping and diseases humans get from animals, and drew up a list of the top 20 geographical hot spots. It found that Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania, as well as India have the highest zoonotic disease burdens, with widespread illness and death. It also found the United States and Europe - especially Britain - Brazil and parts of Southeast Asia may be becoming hot spots of "emerging zoonoses", which are infecting humans for the first time, are especially virulent or are becoming drug resistant. The report studied so-called endemic zoonoses which cause the vast majority of illness and death in poor countries. One such disease is brucellosis, also known as Bang's diseases or Mediterranean fever, which is a highly contagious zoonosis people catch by consuming unsterilized milk or meat from infected animals. The researchers estimated that about one in eight livestock in poor countries are affected by brucellosis. As well as threatening people with disease, this also reduces milk and meat production in cattle by around 8 percent. The study also looked at epidemic zoonoses, which typically occur as outbreaks - such as anthrax and Rift Valley fever - and at the relatively rarer emerging zoonoses like bird flu. A few of these, like HIV/AIDS and H1N1 swine flu, have shown the ability to spread to cause pandemics".

A crucial question that may haunt the humanity is whether meat eating is really necessary and whether this practice can be phased out over the next 50 years in the interest of this planet. Those wedded to meat eating can be expected to be fiercely against such an idea but eventually they may see the rationale behind such a collective effort to save future generations from catastrophe. Imagine the casualty inflicted by the animals through microbiological vectors like bacteria, virus, protozoa etc which find them suitable as a host and transmit the diseases through the foods derived from them. No matter what precaution one takes, it is humanly impossible to prevent animal driven diseases though high awareness and precautionary steps can lessen the damage. It is mind boggling to realize that almost one third of the human population to day is infected with animal transmitted disease vectors and a substantial proportion of mortality is caused by the diseases spawned by them. There are welcome signs that people are increasingly becoming aware of the dynamics involved in raising food animals including the down side of it and campaigns promoting vegetarianism are becoming more and strident to expand the current vegetarian population substantially over the time. 

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
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