Averting wildlife-borne infectious disease epidemics requires a focus on socio-ecological drivers and a redesign of the global food system

Averting wildlife-borne infectious disease epidemics requires a focus on socio-ecological drivers and a redesign of the global food system

Guilia I. Wegnera, Kris A. Murrayb,c, Marco Springmannd, Adrian Mullere,f, Susanne H. Sokolowg,h, Karen Saylorsi, and David M. Morensj

a Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Tubney House, Abingdon

Road, Tubney, Abingdon OX13 5QL, UK

b MRC Unit the Gambia at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Fajara, The Gambia

c MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, School of Public Health,

Imperial College London, UK

d Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food and Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, 34

Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BD, UK

e Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH, Sonneggstrasse 33, 8092 Z€urich, Switzerland

f Research Institute of Organic Agriculture FiBL, Ackerstrasse 113, 5070 Frick, Switzerland

g Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Jerry Yang & Akiko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building - MC 4205, 473

Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

h Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-6150

i Labyrinth Global Health, 15 th Ave NE, St Petersburg, FL 33704, USA

j National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA

forest fire 432870

A debate has emerged over the potential socio-ecological drivers of wildlife-origin zoonotic disease outbreaks and

emerging infectious disease (EID) events. This Review explores the extent to which the incidence of wildlife-origin

infectious disease outbreaks, which are likely to include devastating pandemics like HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, may

be linked to excessive and increasing rates of tropical deforestation for agricultural food production and wild meat

hunting and trade, which are further related to contemporary ecological crises such as global warming and mass spe-

cies extinction. Here we explore a set of precautionary responses to wildlife-origin zoonosis threat, including: a) lim-

iting human encroachment into tropical wildlands by promoting a global transition to diets low in livestock source

foods; b) containing tropical wild meat hunting and trade by curbing urban wild meat demand, while securing

access for indigenous people and local communities in remote subsistence areas; and c) improving biosecurity and

other strategies to break zoonosis transmission pathways at the wildlife-human interface and along animal source

food supply chains.

 

 

Publication details

Wegner, GI, et al. 2022. Averting wildlife-borne infectious disease epidemics requires a focus on socio-ecological drivers and a redesign of the global food system. eClinical Medicine 47: 101386, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101386