Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic certainly caught the world by surprise. And the pandemic has been a clarion call to prevent future pandemics through the development of a policy framework to promote public health. Such a framework should include the relationship between speciesism and pandemics. Specifically, speciesism represents a major barrier to preventing future zoonotic pandemics and the impact such pandemics have on public health. Speciesism is an unsustainable position since it represents misuse of nonhuman species in animal agriculture that often leads to environmental degradation. Unfortunately, the attitude towards animal agriculture’s speciesism is often indifference, not maliciously but naively, because the public is generally unaware of the cruelty associated with animal industrial farming—even to the detriment of human health. For this industry engages in a form of dominant pedagogy and metanarrative through its advertising campaigns and discourses to disguise its violence both to human and environmental health. The outcome of this speciesist attitude is that people cannot be expected to change their dietary habit of over consuming meat, since they consider their consumption of meat and other animal-based products as a right derived from their status as the superior species. In response, especially given the zoonotic origins of pandemics like COVID-19, a public policy response must engage and challenge this speciesist attitude and to deconstruct animal agriculture’s metanarrative concerning its exploitation of nonhuman animals, as well as to develop sustainable and ethical use of animals. Otherwise, both public and environmental health are in jeopardy.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
Public Health Policies and Practices
KEYWORDS
Environmental Health, Pandemics, Public Health, Public Policy, Speciesism
