Treat animals more humanely

Sir, – The Wuhan wet market, where animals were kept in appalling conditions, is thought to have played a major role in the spread of coronavirus.

In the past few days there have been a series of virus ‘ spikes ‘ at meat processing plants in Wales, West Yorkshire, Germany and several US states and a number of ‘experts’ are now investigating the link between the barbaric treatment of animals bred for factory farming and the coronavirus

pandemic.

Michael Greger, author of Bird Flu - A Virus Of Our Own Hatching, asserts that ‘ When we overcrowd animals by the thousands in cramped, football field-size-sheds to lie beak to beak or snout to snout there is stress crippling their immune systems and ammonia from their decomposing waste burning their lungs’.

Combine this with the lack of fresh air and sunlight and you have the ‘ perfect storm ‘ environment for the emergence and spread of disease and viruses

In a 2013 report, the

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations warned ‘livestock health is the weakest link in our global health chain’.

If we are to look at ways of reducing the likelihood of future pandemics much more humane treatment of animals is surely an essential first step.

Alan Woodcock. 23 Osborne Place, Dundee.

them, the Westminster government could well have signed up to allow the US to flood our supermarket shelves with chlorinated chicken.

Leaked documents have revealed the government is backtracking on their promise to ban chlorinated chicken during these talks.

It means they are leaving the door open to food from the US that violates our high food or animal welfare standards.

In the US, thousands of chickens live in “megasheds”, surrounded by their own faeces, and even blinded by noxious