Here's one way to make another pandemic less likely

So began a year of heartache. Families wept on Zoom calls as loved ones passed away, frightened and alone. Businesses closed, their owners' dreams dashed by lockdowns. Employees left their desks, never to return. Brides placed tearful cancellation calls to vendors.

What have we learnt from these past 12 difficult months?

If the arrival of an annual ad celebrating the breeding, confinement, and slaughter of lambs is anything to go by, it would seem the answer is "not much" - and that's a problem. Not only for lambs - and the countless other animals whose body parts will end up on our Webers this holiday - but also for humankind. Winston Churchill said: "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it", yet it is with a perverse patriotic pride that we Aussies repeat this ritual over and over, filling our plates with slain animals and funding and fuelling demand for an industry that's also killing us, in more ways than one.

The novel coronavirus is a zoonotic pathogen - that is, one that jumped to humans from another species. While many were surprised when they first heard of such a thing, we really ought not be shocked. After all, 75 per cent of recently emerged infectious diseases affecting humans were transmitted from other animals. In 2016, the UN Environment Programme warned that the "livestock revolution" (the enormous increase in raising and slaughtering animals for food and other uses) had increased the likelihood of disease transmission.

If you think this is just about people in foreign lands eating bats, think again: in a 2018 paper, spatial epidemiologist Marius Gilbert found that Australia had generated more instances of historical "conversion events" - in which a not-very-pathogenic avian flu strain suddenly becomes dangerous to humans - than China.

That, too, was predictable. Each year on Australia's filthy factory farms, hundreds of millions of animals are crammed together amid their own excrement, some sick and dying, before being trucked to blood-spattered abattoirs. Given that H5N1 bird flu - which can be contracted by humans who come into close contact with infected live or dead birds - has a mortality rate of up to 60 per cent in humans, it beggars belief that bird flesh features in so many of our meals, especially given the plethora of vegan alternatives available in the very same supermarket aisle.

Swine flu has scientists rightly worried as well. Researchers found that pigs on more than 50 per cent of the farms they visited had influenza A viruses - strains able to infect humans. Coupled with the fact that, at the age they're slaughtered - six months - pigs have not yet developed immunity to disease, it's no wonder one animal influenza researcher describes pigs as "a mixing vessel for disease agents".

The bottom line is: we can shout at our governments about border closures and mask mandates all day long, but so long as we keep eating meat, we're playing a cruel game of Russian roulette that could see yet another deadly pandemic break out.

If we are to remain free with anything to rejoice, we have to stop exploiting our fellow animals and change our food system to one that will truly advance Australia - fairly.