We can be confident that our craving for meat and animal products will be the most probable cause of the next pandemic. After the outbreak of Covid-19 the question has stopped being if there is going to be another pandemic but when. 

Since the United Nations (U.N.) started keeping reliable records, a new disease has been observed in humans approximately every 4 months. Three out of four diseases come from animals. The rate in which these new diseases arise seems to have increased in recent decades. While the wild fauna may be the most common source of new diseases, domesticated and bred animals tend to enhance  their development and spread.

Let’s have a look at the numbers! Approximately 60% of human contaminations come from animals. From all the new and upcoming contagious diseases almost 75% have “jumped” from animals to humans, while most zoonotic diseases happened obliquely e.g. from food system. 

Why is there such an increase of novel pathogens? And how affected are they by our craving for meat? 

Here are seven main anthropogenic activities that contribute directly to the increase of zoonotic diseases:

At first glance you might think that the above are not connected… but the truth is far from that.