New dynamics
of consumption

Reading the long chain of events that led to the explosion of the Covid 19 epidemic, newspapers and television broadcasts minutely analyze the medical and epidemiological variables, inform citizens in a detailed way with graphs, numbers and percentages, but neglect most of the times (and inexplicably) an analysis of the causes that have to do with our individual lifestyle and practices.

Land abuse and consumption, which we have already talked about, is something that affects us directly. But it belongs to that kind of argument which is of “relative” important in way of thinking of people.

The rest of what it is: preserve some remote areas of the planet? We can deal with it. Of course: we will have to use a part of the public budget to protect these areas. And yes, of course: we will also have to struggle with those platoons of deniers who still refuse to establish a causal link between the events we are experiencing and some wicked planetary political and productive choices.

But then, if the restrictions affect our private sphere? Should it be a matter of choosing between “being able” to access a good or not, regardless of the possibility of paying for it? Should a limit be imposed on certain purchases or certain consumption because they are considered incompatible with the protection of our planet and sensitive areas most at risk? Or again, if it were no longer possible to produce some objects because raw materials are scarce?

What would we do: would we cry out to the dictatorship? Would we foment a civil war? Would we speak of statist authoritarianism that suffocates individual and corporate freedom?

We have already talked about Coltan: where this mineral is extracted, not only is a furious war going on to control the deposits, but also a wild forest deforestation is taking place that has shocked the local ecosystem. Well: where Coltan is extracted, the Ebola epidemic broke out, one of the most tenacious in recent history.

Ebola is a tremendous, viral haemorrhagic fever, of naturally zoonotic origin, which leads to the death of about 50% of the infected. One person out of two survives, to be clear. Ebola is a product of our desire to deforest to obtain free land and excavation areas for minerals and raw materials.

Selfless selfishness

Even if Ebola has not yet landed in Europe or USA – and we hope it never happens – does this protect us from new dangers? Does it absolve us from the moral and political obligation to participate in a peaceful process leading to the resolution of that international crisis? Certainly not. Intervening in contexts such as those, with the weight of diplomacy and with some of the measures we have spoken of, is the only viable solution to guarantee a future for that part of mankind and, consequently, for all of us.

In fact, even if we tried to reason driven by simple selfishness, we could easily understand that the social costs of a worldwide Ebola epidemic would be incalculable. It is for our benefit and for our well-being that we must deal with this and other issues, not simply to protect the rights of a distant African population.

However, there are diametrically simpler choices: choices that we could all practice, but which would equally have an enormous impact on the world economy if these became widespread and widely practiced behavior. One choice above all: meat consumption.

Now, talking about food protocols in Italy is always very risky. We know, it is not necessary to repeat it, that Italian information is strongly influenced by the large enterprises of the food industry.

We also know that this form of deep state does not allow an open discussions on the issues of nutrition (much less on those of natural nutrition), passing on, at any time of the day, anachronistic fables that many media emphasize despite the most authoritative medical institutions and W.H.O. (World Health Organization) for many years, they have been telling a completely different truth.

Here, we want to clarify it, it is not just a matter of preserving some vested interests, of endangering an economic sector that sees Italy and many countries still leading the world. The stakes are much higher and concern – as we have been experiencing in recent months – the survival of all of us.

But is meat consumption really linked to pandemics? Let’s try to explain this connection.

We have already said how the use of soil mainly serves to free up areas to be used for cultivation. What we have not yet said is that meat production is one of the most polluting processes on the planet and which requires huge quantities of soil to be sustained.

1 kg of beef, in terms of animal nutrition, involves the use of about 15,000 liters of water and 15 kg of vegetable proteins. One hectare of land cultivated with cereals can produce the useful needs to generate 50 kg of meat. With the same soil, however, 10,000 kg of tomatoes, 8000 kg of potatoes or 6000 kg of apples could be obtained.

It is easy to understand that a huge proportion of land and crops is required to feed all the animals intended for slaughter on the planet. And it is equally easy to understand how the world breeding system is always hungry for new land, new space, new places where to set up breeding centers or cultivation of cereals for breeding.

Not only that: if the cultivated land or intensive livestock are located in areas close to the forest areas, or the latter close to the animal sales markets or bordering the slaughterhouses? The risk of contact between wild and non-wild animals would increase exponentially. Hence, probable zoonotic episodes and new spillovers. A real (as has already been defined) time bomb.

It could be argued that Covid 19 has no direct relationship with farm animals. And this is probably true: even if there is no sure information about it, many hypotheses say that the host animal that allowed the spillover between bat and man is actually a wild animal, perhaps a pangolin. But this does not move the problem, rather it accentuates it in some way.

First of all, many other viral and bacterial diseases are generated by farm animals. These include: SARS, Ebola, Zika, Mers, avian and swine flu, not to mention Escherichia coli, Campylobacter and Salmonella infections. Intensive breeders – present everywhere in the world – by their extension and conformation are real (in)natural hatcheries. When a disease occurs inside a farm, it is not possible to predict how many animals will be infected, where their meat ends up, which world markets will exhibit and sell them. For this reason we then proceed to indiscriminate killing.

Secondly – we say it to quell any doubt – we must provide another frightening fact. At the moment it is estimated that there is a huge number of viruses, around 320,000, which affect mammals but not humans. If these viruses mutated, and came to us through unknown mechanisms or by making a leap in species, we don’t have the faintest idea of ​​what could happen.

New diseases could emerge capable of exterminating populations, decimating continents, leaving traces as deep in the history of humanity as bubonic plague or other epidemics of the past have been.

It is not a science fiction hypothesis but a real, present event that concerns our daily lives. The isolation we experience today is a direct consequence of all this.

Another example? Malaysia. At the edge of the forest areas, outbreaks of an unprecedented disease break out within pig farms. It is called Nipah and affects pigs, cats, dogs and, for a spillover, even humans. Nipah causes deaths between 40 and 70% of cases, occurs with fever and dizziness to veer towards very serious forms of encephalitis and, subsequently, death. It does not distinguish between sex, age and physical condition. It has already caused a hundred victims before being isolated by killing millions, I repeat millions, of potentially infected pigs. Nobody can predict what would happen if such a disease crossed the borders of a region and became pandemic.

Curious note? Malaysia is a Muslim country. Intensive pig farms are not for use and consumption by the local population. They are for us, for the western part of the world. They are bred to be exhibited on our markets, worked to make our products.

With the ever-growing invasion criteria of the natural world, we find ourselves in the midst of a struggle against time. The question is not “if” a new pandemic will explode, but only “when” and “what characteristics will it have”. If a truly aggressive virus emerges, with mortality rates much higher than Covid 19, we could face serious danger for the whole human race.

Pollution and Covid 19?

Another element: the pollution produced by intensive farming. There are also many in Italy, we all know. In Lombardy, the region most affected by Covid 19, 85% of ammonia emissions are caused by intensive farming, in this case by slurry produced by animals. Ammonia causes, as the technicians say, an over-fertilization of sensitive ecosystems (therefore an uncontrolled diffusion of substances) and produces greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide. It also creates respirable fine dust (PM10), recognized by the medical world as harmful to the body. These particles are also the ones that the virus most easily “binds” to to spread through the air.

A famous immunologist’s article has recently been published which indicates in the slaughtering and meat packing centers a “super diffuser”, that is an environment in which the working conditions, the treated raw material (slaughtered organic tissues), forced air conditioning and standardized practices favor the systematic spread of Covid 19. In short, a danger for the whole community.

These data are just the tip of the iceberg. It would take books to treat the many pathologies that have attacked man in recent decades: however, all have a common denominator. Soil consumption and massive and intensive breeding of animals for slaughter.

Targeted international measures would be needed to counter the phenomenon of meat consumption.

In developing countries – where shantytowns, low hygiene standards and a lot of ignorance abound – injecting the population into the risks of zoonotic epidemics requires education injections and large subsidies. Local governments – in the form of economic aid, moratoriums and convincing moral suasion strategies – need to fully understand the proportion of the danger. We need task forces and international specialized bodies to impose controls, production standards, respect for the soil and animals, measures and protocols to stem any local epidemics.

For us, people from western part of the world, who should have understood by now the risks of this kind of behavior, we need to take a stable and shared position on the subject. Environmental or vegetarian movements are growing in number, but the fight against time is tight.

Popular, widespread participation is needed, a change in muscle habits that will bring down the demand for meat and, with it, the economy related to its production.

The States in the world are minimizing these risks for fear of hitting their internal economy. If forced, even to redeem themselves in front of the public opinion and simulate a possible pale alternative, they will try to move intensive meat breeding to remote areas of the planet. This will not help, and if anything, it will exacerbate the problem because it will expose unprepared and unhealthy populations to new epidemics.

Then we will try to play the hygiene card. Many companies in the food sector will exploit the fear of a new pandemic to promote new “hyper-hygienic” breeding styles with low use of veterinary medicines and antibiotics or to impose the use of surrogate, synthetic or patented foods, promoted in the name of food security and a greater demand for control of the supply chain.

These struggles for the occupation of a new market will not only not produce substantial effects, but rather will generate a feeling of false security that will deactivate the attention towards the real cornerstones of the issue, which are and remain related to the intensive production of meat on the whole planetary territory, especially in the poorest and most remote areas.

We started this analysis by talking about who will have to pay the bill. At the end of these lines we can say that all of us will pay the bill, in the best contemporary tradition that requires the nationalization of debts and the privatization of profits.

Only an international stance, which ignores the pressures of large corporations and the deep state, can lay the foundations for a substantial solution to this problem and the enormous corollaries (health, human, moral) it entails.