The Rise of Avian Flu Signals a Need for Change in Our Food System
Written by: Rachel Dreskin
As news of H5N1 across dairy and cattle herds spreads across the U.S., we are left with a feeling that is simultaneously frightening yet familiar. Seeing updates about strains of flu that rapidly progress through livestock populations has become an unfortunate norm in this country. As government bodies work to contain the spread, and better understand the viral pathways, we would be deeply remiss should we not acknowledge the dangerous state of our food systems and our overwhelming reliance on intensively reared farmed animals. Hopefully humans are spared in this instance but, even if that is the case, it is a matter of time before devastating disease spreads from farmed animals to humans.
Over the course of the past 150 years, the U.S. food system has transformed to be one that prioritizes the production of animal-based foods at high-volume and low cost. Supported by government subsidies, enabled by corporate consolidation, and amplified by policy that encourages factory farms, industrial animal agriculture has become a backbone of our food system. Despite plants providing a diverse array of protein sources, Americans currently get two-thirds of their protein from animal-based foods – and there is a troubling cost to concentrating our vast resources on the production of intensively reared farmed animals: the security of our food system.
The Far-Reaching Impact of Industrial Animal Agriculture
A food system prioritizing industrial animal agriculture was built on a theory of “efficiency,” but its outsized impacts are harming humans and threatening the future viability of our planet. Since 2002, the number of animals in U.S. factory farms has ballooned by 50%, now housing over 10 billion animals. Raising animals in such intensive conditions requires the broad-scale use of antibiotics – in 2020, the meat industry alone purchased 69% of the U.S. antibiotic supply which is also fueling the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria (a leading cause of death for people of all ages). Crowded environments and the compromised immunity of intensively reared farmed animals leads to rampant spread of infectious disease, of which H5N1 is just one of many. According to the CDC, around 60% of all known infectious diseases and 75% of new and emerging diseases are from zoonotic origins – in the past four decades, the rate of emergence for new infectious diseases have increased at more than four times the rate of the prior decade.
Around 10 times more land is allocated to growing crops that feed livestock than growing crops for human consumption. We dedicate 36 to 74 trillion gallons of water per year to this system – and around 800 times more public funding goes into industrial animal agriculture than plant-based foods. From an environmental standpoint, animal agriculture is responsible for nearly 57% of greenhouse gas emissions from all food production. Clearing land to make room for cattle grazing or growing crops for livestock feed is one of the largest causes of deforestation and biodiversity loss—and to make matters worse–industrial animal agriculture is a leading driver of ocean dead zones, air and water pollution, and public health crises like antibiotic resistance. In an Op-Ed published in the New York Times, Zeynep Tufekci wrote, “maybe we’ll get lucky and H5N1 will not spread to humans” – but, because of our industrial animal food system, we’re playing a dangerous game of rolling the dice to find out.
A Better Way Forward
There is hope for an alternative path forward that begins with recognizing the benefits of food systems that focus on producing food for direct human consumption. By prioritizing growing plant-based foods and investing in the infrastructure to support the growth of the plant-based foods industry, we could see American protein consumption shift in favor of plant sources.
Producing plant-based foods produces nearly half the greenhouse gas emissions of animal-based foods. Shifting toward a plant-forward food system can not only play a role in curtailing emissions, but can also re-allocate crops and arable land to feed people instead of livestock, alleviate growing resource inequities, and eliminate the suffering of animals in factory farms.In addition to the environmental and public health benefits of embracing a shift toward plants, plants also offer expansive sources of proteins and other nutrients, such as fiber, which Americans are severely lacking. The plant-based foods industry represents an opportunity to reimagine the way we feed the world for the benefit of all.
Our 2023 retail sales data shows that 62%, or 79 million, U.S. households are now buying plant-based foods; motivated by their desire to purchase delicious and exciting foods that meet their expectations for personal and planetary health, as well as animal welfare. Broadscale adoption of plant-based foods needs to be supported by robust government policies and education initiatives that target the shifting of lifestyles and behaviors, including promoting plant-based options and building infrastructure to make plant-based options more accessible.
Now is the time to band together and elevate a conversation around setting targets, as was done in the Netherlands with setting a 50-50 animal to plant target ratio, to get on track toward rebalancing our protein intake of animals and plants. When private and public sectors work jointly, a just transition of agricultural practices is not only possible, it is to the benefit of us all.