Vegan sticker activist group Gummy Bears have placed 2000 stickers in various public places around Auckland, Warkworth, Pukekohe, Tauranga, Hamilton, Whanganui, New Plymouth and Wellington, raising awareness of the link between animal agriculture and COVID-19. The stickers urge people to stop eating animals in order to stop the next pandemic.

“COVID-19 was spread through animals in a ‘wet market’, a euphemism for a slaughterhouse,” says Gummy Bears spokesperson Dr Michael Morris. “Animal agriculture and animal slaughter have been responsible for the spread of several pandemics, including the ongoing AIDS pandemic, the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and even the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50 million people.”

The Gummy Bears are urging Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to stop all animal slaughter by 2025 to prevent future pandemics. Transitioning to a plant-based economy would also clean up our waterways, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve the health of New Zealanders, and of course prevent unimaginable animal suffering.

OPEN LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER JACINDA ARDERN

5 May 2020

Dear Prime Minister

Like many New Zealanders we are impressed with the firm yet compassionate leadership you have shown in the campaign to eradicate COVID 19 from New Zealand. In recognition of the potential we now have to create a more compassionate and just society, we are emboldened to ask you to consider the proposals outlined below.

Such a strategy, if implemented, will once again place our country at the forefront of enlightened social change. In essence, it involves transitioning out of animal agriculture, and working towards the closure of all slaughterhouses by 2025.

We have several reasons for this request.

1. Pandemic response

The present COVID 19 pandemic most likely started in a so-called ‘wet market’ in Wuhan, China. The current consensus is that it originated from bats and passed through a secondary host, most likely a pangolin, before jumping the species barrier to humans [1].

A ‘wet market’ is a euphemism. It is essentially a slaughterhouse. It contains animals living in cramped, unhealthy and immunocompromised conditions waiting for their turn to die. Diseases spread rapidly among the animals, and the presence of blood and effluent during handling and slaughter, allows the disease to spread from the animals to humans.

COVID 19 is not the only zoonotic disease that has caused pandemics among humans. The virus responsible for the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50 million people worldwide has been extracted and restored. Genetic analysis reveals that the most likely explanation for the origins of this virus is from recombination of bird and swine strains. The 1918 influenza strain is thought to be the common ancestor of present influenza and swine flu viruses [2]. If this is the case, then seasonal flu, which kills 300,000-600,000 people per year (WHO data), can also be traced to pig farming and slaughter.

The 2009 swine flu pandemic, responsible for 200,000 to 500,000 deaths, has also been traced to piggeries in the USA and Mexico. Like slaughterhouses and ‘wet markets’, these operations feature animals kept in crowded unhealthy conditions, ideal for the spread of diseases [3].

The SARS 2003 and MERS 2012 outbreaks came from live markets in China, and camels in the Middle East respectively. A recent systematic review discusses these and cites 75 smaller outbreaks reported between 1996 and 2014, which were spread from contact with animals in slaughterhouses and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs, aka ‘factory farms’). These included avian influenza, Q fever, swine influenza, and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) [4].

The World Health Organisation published a disturbingly prophetic warning the year before the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak started, telling us not to be complacent, predicting an outbreak could erupt at ‘any time’, and pointing out that 70% of new pathogens discovered since the 1970s have been of animal origin. The report goes on to state:

“This is a burgeoning threat, because animals are intensively farmed, transported for trade, and kept in close contact with other species and humans in market places”[5].

In the interests of public health, we urge you to eliminate future pandemics at the source.

2. Compassion

Allowing slaughter to continue is contrary to your stated aims of compassionate government. We acknowledge the progress this government has made, and continues to make, in improving living conditions for the vulnerable human members of our community. And of course we are all very proud of the way you de-escalated potential tensions that could have resulted in revenge attacks or copy-cat killings after the Christchurch massacre.

We ask you to show the same compassion to the non-human members of our economy and society, who are far more downtrodden than the worst examples of human misery in our country. There were 150 million animals slaughtered in New Zealand in 2018, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. This is more animals killed in a single year, and in a small country, than all human deaths from wars, gulags, purges, massacres and holocausts during the 20th century.

Of these animals, approximately 121 million are chickens. These animals live in torment and die in agony. They are not even natural creatures. They are human constructs; genetic freaks bred to be so clinically obese that they are not only constantly hungry but their hearts and legs cannot bear the strain of their massive bodies. A government report in 2006 found that up to 38% of these birds are in constant pain due to lameness [6]. Keeping these birds in free range conditions doesn’t help, because the problem is in their genetics [7].

Professor John Webster from Bristol University described lameness in broiler chickens as the worst example of human inhumanity to another sentient being. He wrote this in the 1980s, but conditions have not changed for these top-heavy freakish birds [7].

Slaughterhouses are designed for fast line speeds, not animal welfare. They are places of horror. We urge you to watch ‘Dominion’, a documentary showing undercover footage of Australian slaughterhouses so you can understand what goes on, quite legally, in a supposedly enlightened country.

There is no reason to suspect that conditions are any better in New Zealand. Slaughter regulations require animals to be stunned before their throats are cut. In the case of chicken slaughterhouses, this is achieved by electrical stunning in a water bath. However, stunning is known to fail in a significant number of cases, leading to unspeakable agony for the chickens [8].

Nor is there any evidence that treatment is any better for larger animals. Temple Grandin is an internationally known animal welfare expert, and she is proud of the North American Meat Institute Guidelines that she set up for cattle slaughter. Under these guidelines, she states that 90% of animals stunned with a captive bolt pistol are rendered insensible with the first shot.

This means 10% are not stunned. In slaughterhouses, acting according to the highest standards, 1 in 10 animals suffer the agony of having their throats cut fully conscious. Grandin mentions other aspects of behaviour indicating pain and distress during the slaughter process, including animals squealing and bellowing while the stunning is going on. According to Grandin, well run slaughterhouses can lower squealing to 5% of cases [9]. Five percent of 150 million is still 7.5 million animals squealing, squawking, bleating or bellowing in agony every year in New Zealand.

Slaughterhouse work is equally traumatic for low paid workers forced to participate in the killing. The recent revelations around the spread of COVID 19 in US and Canadian slaughterhouses has brought this to the fore, but it has always been known, ever since Upton Sinclair published ‘The Jungle’ in 1906, that slaughterhouses are hellish places for humans as well as animals.

A former slaughterhouse worker, Cortnee Butler, has this to say:

“I worked in a smaller slaughter facility in Hawkes Bay for 6 months. My experience there has traumatised me to such an extent that I am now on a sickness benefit and I am undergoing treatment for PTSD. Presently I am unable to work.

I still have nightmares that feature the panicked animals I witnessed. Their eyes were full of fear, it was even tangible. Death hung in the air surrounding the facility. It was a very oppressive feeling.

I recall abuse of animals to be quite standard. In my short time there, I saw animals killed while conscious. The electric stunning method was not effective for every sheep.

I saw staff hitting the animals to make them move when they froze in fear. More extreme example of what I saw were staff forcefully tugging and pulling the animals’ ears when hitting them didn't work.

Though possibly the worst thing I witnessed was a staff member slamming a metal gate on a sheep's leg, crushing it. There were so many bodies squirming, mounting and fighting each other for space, she physically struggled to move. The staff member kept shoving her, and slamming the gate on her until she forced her way into the herd. When I confronted the staff member about what they did, they claimed "they're just dumb animals. It's not like they can feel it."

Violence towards humans also occurred. A senior staff member told me that disagreements between staff were solved by a punch up in the car park, or further off company property.

Alcoholism was more common. And likely contributed to the aggression of staff. Every staff member I spoke to drank after work. Either to forget, or for some comfort. I hope that no animal, human or non-human, ever has to experience these horror houses ever again.

I stopped eating animals and their products while working there. I couldn't stomach eating the bodies of sentient beings at home after witnessing body after body be cut into pieces for hours. I remember thinking to myself that if we were doing the same process to dogs, there would be outrage. Now I commit myself to campaigning for a compassionate world.”

3. Environmental sustainability

With a projected 10 billion people on the planet by 2050, it is a matter of urgency that we find sustainable ways of producing food. However, animal agriculture is neither efficient or sustainable. Passing all our food through an animal before eating it is so shockingly wasteful that a team of engineers, tasked with designing a system that can destroy the planet in the shortest possible time, would be hard put to come up with anything better.

Global climate change is a threat to our well-being, and to our very existence. New Zealand has a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement. Part of this agreement is to properly audit the contributions that different industries make to emissions. The Ministry for the Environment has conducted this audit and the results show that 49% of emissions are caused by agriculture. Of these, 91.7% was from cattle, sheep and deer [10]. Worldwide, animal agriculture is responsible for 23% of global warming potential, according to New Zealand scientists [11].

These calculations are based on the 100-year average warming potential, as used by the IPPC. If shorter term warming over the next 20 years is used, then the contribution of beef and dairy production almost doubles, because of the methane gas produced [12].

The Ministry for the Environment is currently consulting on ways to better protect our waterways. It acknowledges that water quality is being compromised through diffuse pollution from agricultural intensification, mostly from animals. Animal agriculture has been linked to water pollution, water shortages, habitat destruction and desertification, both in New Zealand [13] and around the world [14].

Responsible environmental stewardship and a move to a low carbon economy as recommended by the Productivity Commission report of 2018, requires phasing out animal slaughterhouses.

4. Other public health effects

Apart from the danger of zoonotic outbreaks and psychological damage to slaughterhouse workers described earlier, a recent report from the United States has shown that animal farming, particularly farming of chickens for meat, costs more in health mitigation from air pollution (PM2.5) than it contributes to the economy [15]. There is no reason why this effect should be any different in New Zealand, since the same system of vertically integrated chicken production is used here.
The most insidious way in which animal slaughter affects human health however is the consumption of animals. It is well known that the animal-heavy so-called Standard American Diet (SAD) that is most commonly eaten in New Zealand (the ‘A’ could also stand for ‘Australasian’), is unhealthy, and is a major cause of obesity and heart problems [16].

In the New Zealand context, Otago researchers have calculated the human and financial benefits from switching from the standard New Zealand diet to a fully plant-based one. Estimated Quality of Life Year (QALY) gains were 1.46 million. Estimated savings on health costs were $20.2 billion over the life of the present cohort [12]. We also know that a completely plant-based diet is healthy, and suitable for all life stages. This has been endorsed by the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics [17], and affirmed by the British Dietetics Association [18]

What this means is that even if small quantities of animal products are not actually harmful, they are certainly not necessary for human health. So the slaughter of 150 million land animals and about 10 times as many fish within New Zealand each year, cannot be considered a ‘necessary evil.’

5. The economy

Animal slaughter is responsible for cruelty on a massive scale, and environmental and public health disasters. These all have an effect on our economy. The costs of disasters and outbreaks such as storms, droughts, air pollution, obesity and pestilence is always disproportionately born by the poor and vulnerable, which has equity implications.

Animal agriculture is in any case on the way out due to the rapid development of cheap protein alternatives. A recent report predicted that animal agriculture will collapse by 2030 as precision fermentation technology leads to plant meat becoming cheaper [19]. Already we see plant-based meats taking over market share in New Zealand, a trend that is worrying the meat industry [20].

It makes no sense to continue to prop up destructive, unhealthy sunset industries that are of no benefit to us. As Matthew Scully, speech writer to former President George H.W. Bush, and animal rights advocate, has pointed out, if something is a necessary evil, and you remove the necessity ... what’s left?

Thank you, Prime Minister, for reading our letter and referring to the references we have cited. We sincerely hope that you will consider our proposal to create a kinder, gentler, more sustainable New Zealand in the 21st century.

Yours sincerely

The ‘Gummy Bears’

Notes:

[1] Rabi FA, Al Zoubi MS, Kasabeh GA. et al. SARS-CoV-2 and coronavirus disease: what we know so far. Pathogens 2020; 9: 231. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens9030231.

[2] Taubenberger J. K. (2006). The origin and virulence of the 1918 "Spanish" influenza virus. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 150(1), 86–112.

[3] Fraser, C., Donelly, CA., Cauchemez, S et al. (2009) Pandemic potential of a strain of influenza A (H1N1): early findings. Science 324, 1557-1561

[4] Klous G, Huss A, Heederik DJJ, Coutinho, R. Human-livestock contacts and their relationship to transmission of zoonotic pathogens, a systematic review of the literature. One Health 2016; 2: 65-76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2016.03.001.

[5] World Health Organisation (2018) Managing epidemics: key facts about major deadly diseases. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/managing-epidemics-interactive.pdf

[6] Bagshaw, C. S., Matthews, L. R., & Rogers, A. (2006). Key indicators of poultry welfare in New Zealand. Wellington: Unpublished client report on MAF policy.

[7] K.M. Hartcher & H.K. Lum (2019) Genetic selection of broilers and welfare consequences: a review, World's Poultry Science Journal, DOI: 10.1080/00439339.2019.1680025

[8] EFSA Panel of Animal Health and Welfare (2012) Scientific opinion on electrical requirements for waterbath equipment applicable for poultry. EFSA journal 10, 80.

[9] Grandin, T. (2013) Making Slaughterhouses More Humane for Cattle, Pigs, and Sheep Annual. Review of Animal Bioscience 1:491–512.

[10] Ministry for the Environment (2018) New Zealand’s Greenhouse gas inventory 1990-2016.

[11] Reisinger, A. and Clark, H. (2018), How much do direct livestock emissions actually contribute to global warming?. Global Change Biology https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13975

[12] Drew, J., Cleghorn, C., Macmillan, A. and Mizdrak, A. (2020) Healthy and Climate-Friendly Eating Patterns in the New Zealand Context. Environmental Health Perspectives https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP5996 .

[13] Joy, M. Polluted inheritance. New Zealand’s fresh water crisis. Wellington: Bridget Williams Books.

[14] Poore, J. Nemecek, J. (2018) Reducing food’s environmental impact through producers and consumers. Science 360, 987-992.

[15] Tschofen, P., Azevedo, I.L., Muller, N.Z. (2019) Fine particulate matter damages and value added in the US economy. PNAS October 1, 2019 116 (40) 19857-19862; first published September 9, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1905030116

[16] Willett, W., Rockstrom, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., Lang, T., Vermeulen, S. et al. (2019) Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Lancet Commissions 393, 447-492.

[17] Melina, V., Craig, W. & Levin, S. (2016) Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Vegetarian Diets. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 116, 1970-1980.

[18] “British Dietetic Association confirms well-planned vegan diets can support healthy living in people of all ages”, British Dietetics Association News 7 August 2017. https://www.bda.uk.com/news/view?id=179

[19] Tubb, C. & Seba, T. (2019). Rethinking food and agriculture 2020-2030: the second domestication of plants and animals, the disruption of the cow, and the collapse of industrial live stock farming. A RethinkX Sector Disruption Report.

[20] De Boo, J., Knight, A. (2020) The Green protein report: meeting New Zealand’s climate change targets by 2030 through reduced reliance on animal agriculture. Vegan Society of New Zealand.

© Scoop Media