Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Zoonosis II

Electric Boogaloo

Recently, I pointed out that raising and killing animals for food is the leading cause of emerging diseases and pandemics, and that we need to stop. I'm writing again to urge you not to take my word for it. đź’š

The Covid-19 pandemic shows we must transform the global food system

Our global, profit-driven, meat-centered food system is making us sick. We need a radical rethink.


“The principal driver of zoonotic diseases is industrial animal agriculture, breeding diseases like swine flu and avian flu on hellish factory farms, and contributing to antibiotic resistance and climate change, both of which exacerbate the problem. Individually, we must stop eating animal products. Collectively, we must transform the global food system and work toward ending animal agriculture.”

Our Cruel Treatment of Animals Led to the Coronavirus

The conditions that lead to the emergence of new infectious diseases are the same ones that inflict horrific harms on animals.


“The coronavirus arose in animals and jumped the species barrier. Most – and some believe all – infectious diseases are of this type (zoonotic). Their emergence is a result of the very conditions that also inflict horrific harm on animals – being kept in confined conditions and then butchered. Simply put, the coronavirus pandemic is a result of our gross maltreatment of animals.”

Surely the link between abusing animals and the world's health is now clear


“Diseases have always jumped species, but the Covid-19 pandemic may be a sign of an ominous acceleration. If antibiotic resistance continues to grow, we may look back on the deaths of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and say: 'Really? Was that all?' Antibiotic use in the intensive and unfathomably cruel production of meat is as pernicious. I am not a vegan. If changing facts changed minds, I should become one – as should you, in all likelihood.”

I'm pleased that I played a tiny part in the content of this piece, through a mutual friend.

The meat we eat is a pandemic risk, too

“If you actually want to create global pandemics, then build factory farms.”


“When we overcrowd animals by the thousands, in cramped football-field-size sheds, to lie beak to beak or snout to snout, and there’s stress crippling their immune systems, and there’s ammonia from the decomposing waste burning their lungs, and there’s a lack of fresh air and sunlight — put all these factors together and you have a perfect-storm environment for the emergence and spread of disease.”

  animal rights     danger     health     rescued from facebook     veganism     pandemics  
about
close photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

THE MANUSCRIPT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
PANDORA'S SISTERS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
DON'T SHOOT ME IN THE ASS, AND OTHER STORIES by Michael Stephen Fuchs
D-BOYS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
COUNTER-ASSAULT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book One - Fortress Britain, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Genesis, by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Three - Three Parts Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Four - Maximum Violence, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Five - EXODUS, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Six - The Horizon, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : NEMESIS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Nine - Cataclysm by Michael Stephen Fuchs

ARISEN, Book Ten - The Flood by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Thirteen - The Siege by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Fourteen - Endgame by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Fickisms
ARISEN : Odyssey
ARISEN : Last Stand
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 1 - The Collapse
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 2 - Tribes
Black Squadron
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 3 - Dead Men Walking
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 4 - Duty
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 5 - The Last Raid
ARISEN : Fickisms ][ – This Time, It's Personal
ARISEN : Operators, Volume I - The Fall of the Third Temple
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