Price we pay for‘naked’ chicken  

Why do virus outbreaks keep happening at fairly regular intervals? Why is China the ground zero for most virus outbreaks? How and why are the sources of most of the virus outbreaks animals and birds?

Even as the questions gained currency, people are turning to evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace’s book ‘ Big Farms Make Big Flu’- Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness and Nature of Science-for the answers.

In 2017, a team of researchers led by Shi Zheng Li and Cui Jie of the Wuhan Institute of Virologywarned that "another deadly outbreak of SARS could emerge at any time". It just took exactly two years for this warning to come true!

Since the SARS outbreak in 2003, we have had several viral outbreaks- both on a national and worldwide scale- at regular intervals in the last two decades. The Swine Flu pandemic in 2009-10, the Ebola pandemic in 2013, Swine Flu outbreak in India in 2015, the Zika epidemic in 2015-16, the Nipah outbreak in India in 2018…the list is long.

Wallace argued that the outbreaks were linked, tied by a huge Gordian knot of Influenza. He pointed his finger at neoliberalism, which the British Journalist and writer George Monbiot describes as “the ideology at the root of all our problems”.

Wallace argued that during the last two decades the increasing diversity of humanfriendly influenza of zoonotic origin were due to increased interaction between human beings and wildlife.

But, haven’t humans and animals interacted for centuries? So, what has changed in the last 30 years that has led to repeated outbreaks of zoonotic viruses?

Wallace cited deregulation and the industrial model of vertically integrated livestock - where livestock are packed one above the other - which originated in the southeastern United States but is now practiced across the globe as factors which have changed the rules of the game. The neoliberalisation of animal food sectors have had several consequences for the health of both human beings and animals, he contends.

First, it has led to greater integration of stockbreeding, horticulture, aqua-culture, live bird market system and poultry and increased interspecies communication. Second, despite hosting billions of pigs and poultry, governments around the world offer little or no systematic testing, regulation and animal health surveillance.

Third, it is the taxpayer who pays for environmental and health damages caused by factory farms. The cost of fallouts of an accidental breach in poultry lagoons or release of pool of feces into river or tributary is picked up by the state.

The continued search for new land and resources have led to invasion of forests and to increased inter-species interaction. The Ebola pandemic which emerged in western Africa is a classic example. As the natural habitat of fruit bats - the carrier of the Ebola virus - was destroyed by the palm oil industry, they came in close contact with human settlements which led to jumping of the virus from bats to humans. The destruction of natural habitat have also led to increased interface between migratory birds, the chief carriers of virus, and poultry

However, the most important critique which Wallace does of the neoliberal agribusiness model is that of changing the very commodity of their trade i.e. live, breathing organisms to maximise their profit.

He cites the case of genetically engineered "nakedchicken", who are highly susceptible to diseases. Naked chicken is born without feathers which cuts down the cost of plucking feathers, thereby maximising profit! He also cites experimentation with poultry breeding to increase production. In a farm in Southern Chinese province of Guangdong, a Bird Flu zone, geese were exposed to a counter-seasonal lighting schedule that induced out-ofseason egg-laying, thereby doubling the production!

Criticism of China for the COVID-19 outbreak is motivated by a complex mix of racism, geopolitics, nationalism and the history of previous outbreaks. From accusing Communist China of “manufacturing” the virus to blaming “strange eating habits” of the Chinese people, virtual space is replete with racist and political conspiracy theories around the COVID-19 pandemic.

But is China solely responsible for the outbreak of this virus and the pandemic? The answer is both yes and no. The Chinese government should be held responsible for first ignoring and then hounding Dr Li Wenliang who identified the virus and issued warnings about it. They can also be held responsible for allowing a local epidemic to become a pandemic by not taking proper containment measures.

But broader mechanisms, ownership and regulation of livestock across time and space and policy decisions taken by governments to control animal trade and industry also require a much closer look as Wallace suggested.

The push for privatisation of health and social sectors and the vertical model of industrial poultry farming popularized by the West have also been responsible for the failure to detect and deal with virulent forms of Influenza. The ideology that places profit over people, which privatises profit and socialises losses is what needs to be put in the dock.

(The writer is a Ph.D scholar at JNU)