When animals can be poison
The outbreak of bird flu in several states when the Coronavirus pandemic is already rampant, plus the series of epidemics of other littleknown but highly lethal ailments across the world in recent years, is a sign of the changing profile of global health hazards. A notable feature of the emerging trend is the preponderance of infections transmitted to humans from animals. These maladies, technically called zoonotic diseases, or just zoonotics, are usually infectious, highly fatal, and tough to manage. What is more worrisome is that most, though not all, of the animals involved in spreading these zoonotics are part of the human food chain. The illnesses arising from animals and their products (read non-vegetarian food) are aptly categorised as food-borne zoonotic diseases (FBZDS).
The World Health Organization (WHO) reckons that three of every four new or emerging infectious ailments are now zoonotic, linked in some way with animals. The contagions can be viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi, or other kinds of germs. Some of the animal-generated infections, such as HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), began as zoonotic but later mutated into a humanonly strain. Some other zoonotics, like Ebola, avian influenza (bird flu), and Salmonella, have the tendency to recur and proliferate rapidly to cause epidemics or pandemics. The viruses of the novel Coronavirus class are all the more virulent and can spread worldwide to cause pandemics like the ongoing Covid-19 scourge.
The list of zoonotic and food-borne zoonotic health disorders is fairly long. The familiar names among them are Covid-19, bird flu, swine flu, Ebola,
Nipah, dengue, encephalitis, and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). Among the currently prevalent animal-linked maladies, bird flu, caused by H1N5 and its variants, and Covid-19, caused by novel Coronavirus, are of special concern because of their frightening health and economic implications.
Bird flu is basically a deadly respiratory illness of poultry and wild birds which can sometimes get transferred to animals like swine, cats, and dogs, but rarely to human beings. Only those handling infected birds without taking due precaution can get it. In India, there has been no case of human fatality due to this virus. Deaths attributable to bird flu occur occasionally in East Asian countries because of consuming the under-cooked meat of poultry or other birds. This virus does not spread from person to person or through an intake of wellcooked poultry products.
Though Coronavirus is included among the zoonotic diseases, its source is yet to be ascertained. Many experts believe it is a wild virus that might have come from bats. Others think the animal involved in its transfer to human beings is the masked palm civet, a small catlike mammal, which is considered a culinary delicacy in some parts of China. There is also a suspicion, backed by former US president Donald Trump, that it is a man-made virus that leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. However, a 13-member team of the WHO is looking into this issue in a bid to discover its origin. It has visited China to probe the escape-fromlab angle as well.
Nevertheless, the health and economic cost of the zoonotics is woefully high. Around 600 million people all over the world were estimated to have been affected by 31 outbreaks of major food-borne zoonotics in 2010, causing about 420,000 deaths. The disease load was the maximum in Africa (43 per cent), followed by Southeast Asia (24 per cent). The India-specific data for 2015 shows that about 105,000 children below the age of five died due to these ailments. Going by the results of the community studies, every Indian child suffers two to three episodes of food-triggered diarrhoea or other disease every year, resulting in 400,000-500,000 deaths.
India’s annual economic losses due to food-borne zoonotic diseases are estimated at around $28 billion, or 0.5 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) at 2017 prices. “Food safety is no longer merely a public health issue. It is also a matter of concern for the international food trade due to risk of crossborder transportation of contaminated foods,” said National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) President T Mohapatra. A policy paper (No. 95) — “Food-borne Zoonotic Diseases” — brought out by the NAAS in July 2020, observes that most outbreaks of these maladies in India go unreported or reported after the major damage had already taken place. Recent estimates reveal that one of every 12 persons fall ill due to food-related infectious ailments. Worse still, the incidence of zoonotic diseases is projected to swell by 70 per cent by 2030, thanks to the growing consumption of non-vegetarian foods.
The NAAS policy paper attributes the anticipated dreadful scenario to the lack of standard operating procedures for safe handling of animal-linked foods at all the four stages of the food chain — production, processing, transportation, and marketing. It is, therefore, imperative to put in place a holistic system of ensuring hygienic handling of food at all steps — from farm to fork.