Covid-style pandemic could easily start in US from meat supply: Report

Ann Linder said, “We're mixing animals and pathogens across different continents.”

The next global pandemic could start from the United States, a report from Harvard Law School and New York University claimed. Even though Americans think that "it couldn't happen here," regulations are so loose that a virus could easily jump from animals to people sparking a deadly outbreak, the researchers found.

An illustration of the novel coronavirus seen next to a health care worker at a Covid-19 testing centre.

"There really is this false sense of security and unfounded belief that zoonotic disease is something that happens elsewhere. In fact, I think we're more vulnerable than ever in many ways," Ann Linder, one of the report’s lead authors said. The report also highlighted several areas of vulnerability, including commercial farms where millions of livestock come into close contact with each other and their handlers. Other areas for possible transmission could be wild animal trade in which animals are imported with few health checks and the fur trade in which minks and other animals are bred.

"Through globalization, we've erased seas and mountains and other natural boundaries of disease," Ann Linder said, adding, "We're mixing animals and pathogens across different continents and circulating at a dizzying and ever-increasing pace."

About 220 million live wild animals are imported in the US every year for pets and other purposes, Ann Linder said, explaining that if someone wants to bring a dog or cat into the country, there's a process, "but if I'm a wildlife importer and I want to bring in 100 wild mammals from South America, I can do that with very little regulation of any kind."

In response to the study, Ashley Peterson, National Chicken Council senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs, said, “According the CDC, the likelihood of spreading an avian disease to a human in the United States is extremely rare."

Workers on pig and poultry farms are particularly vulnerable, because of a lack of regulations protecting them, Delcianna Winders, an associate professor of law and director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School in Royalton, said.

“There is virtually no regulation of on-farm raising of animals. There's limited regulation of the slaughterhouse but it is extremely inadequate and it's getting worse. Right now, the federal government is deregulating slaughter, rather than increasing oversight,” Delcianna Winders said.