Tesco suppliers creating ‘ideal breeding ground’ for next pandemic

Major meat and dairy suppliers are keeping animals in conditions which create the “ideal breeding ground” for new diseases and a future pandemic, including companies which supply major UK retailers such as Tesco.

A report from non-profit organisation the Fairr Initiative has scored food industry companies by their performance on mitigating the risk of allowing new global diseases to emerge. It found that two in every three suppliers (63%) failed to improve conditions which carry a high risk of infection.

The research, backed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), warned that the failure to improve “crowded, high-stress conditions” in animal agriculture creates an “ideal breeding ground for new emerging diseases”.

FAIRR’s Emerging Disease Risk Ranking labelled 38 out of 60 large meat, fish and dairy producers (63%) as ‘high risk’ for failing to address conditions and practices that could enable “new diseases to emerge and spread”. These included a Chinese supplier to Tesco.

Companies are labelled as ‘high risk’ for scoring poorly across a set of seven criteria vital to preventing future zoonotic pandemics (infections which cross from animals to humans). These include welfare conditions for animals as well as working conditions which contribute to the spread of disease among employees.

The report did show a slight improvement from June 2020, when 73% of the 60 companies were deemed to be high risk.

Read more: Pig farming branded ‘disgrace’ as 40,000 healthy animals are ‘wasted’ 

Last year The Independent reported that South African scientists warned that demand for regular supplies of affordable meat would create the risk of a future pandemic that “would make Covid seem a dress rehearsal”.

In 2020, a report from the UN also highlighted that the rising trend in zoonotic diseases, such as Covid-19, is driven by degradation of the natural environment; through unsustainable farming, wildlife exploitation, climate change and other stresses.

“From avian and swine flu to Covid-19, it’s time for meat companies and policymakers to learn from Covid-19 and to invest in preventing the next pandemic,” said chair of the FAIRR Initiative, Jeremy Coller.

“Intensive farming environments, housing most of the 70 billion farm animals reared every year, are a known breeding ground for disease.

“Business-as-usual animal agriculture risks incubating the next zoonotic pandemic, posing both intolerable investment risk and a threat to global public health. The sector must improve rapidly, starting with welfare conditions for both animals and workers.”

“The impact of Covid-19 on our collective health and economic wellbeing is unfathomable,” added Dr Maria Neira, director of the Department of Public Health and Environment at WHO.

“We must do everything in our power to reduce the risk of a new pandemic emerging, and in this, the importance of sustainable food systems cannot be understated.”

As the ESG policy lead for Legal & General Investment Management, Alex Burr described the findings as “a wake-up call for the meat industry”.

Grocery Gazette has asked Tesco for comment.

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