How much do farming practices contribute?
Human populations have grown over the past few centuries, and in recent decades, the demand for pork and chicken has soared. That has led to the proliferation of large, dense farms with thousands of animals. Waltner-Toews said those result in a number of factors that boost transmission of viruses such as influenza: • Many genetically similar animals are kept in one place, and their similarity leaves them susceptible to the same diseases. • The stress of crowded conditions increases the chance that infected animals will show disease symptoms that help the disease spread, such as coughing and sneezing. • The animals are shipped all over the world. • People are traveling all over the world, including migrant farm workers brought in from other countries as cheap agricultural labour. Waltner-Toews suggested that two changes would reduce the spread of new strains of influenza: • Having larger number of smaller farms instead of a small number of large farms. • Reducing the reliance of agricul
