A recent article in Neuroepidemiology, called “What the COVID-19 crisis is telling humanity,” argues that the way we treat animals puts us at risk of further disasters similar to the current pandemic. The authors, David Wiebers and Valery Feigin, are neuroscientists. Their call for a change in our treatment of […]
Vet Ethics: Taking protection against infection … from animals
Knowledge of the effects of SARS-CoV-2 on animals continues to emerge, albeit slowly. We already knew that the virus probably originated from bats, and may have passed on through an intermediary animal, perhaps the pangolin. We now also now that SARS-CoV-2 can infect pet cats and dogs and cause illness, […]
Vet Ethics: A war of words over wet markets
Major figures such as United States President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have claimed that SARS-COV-2 escaped from a Chinese laboratory. Experts, however, think it is more likely that the novel coronavirus originated from human contact with wildlife, possibly in a wet market in Wuhan. The new […]
Food production and the environment: how much responsibility do we bear?
On August 8, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report called “Climate Change and Land”. The report, written by 100 authors from developed and developing countries, made news headlines. It addressed the extent of the contribution to greenhouse gas emissions of forest destruction, agricultural food production, and […]