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University of Nebraska Medical Center

Our Desire for Inexpensive Food Is Putting Us in Danger

NYT/Opinion

A dairy worker in Texas contracts H5N1 bird flu after contact with infected cows, and suffers eye inflammation. Weeks later, a dairy worker in Michigan begins to cough and then tests positive for the virus. A ferret in a cage (ferrets are often used as study proxies for humans) becomes infected with the virus by airborne transmission from a sick ferret in a nearby cage. These data and other recent cases of H5N1 suggest that the virus might be evolving to spread more easily to — and among — people.

One implication is that while U.S. health authorities say the risk to the general public remains low, that risk could increase quickly. Another implication, less obvious but worth pondering, is that our collective appetite for on-demand inexpensive meat and dairy is leading us toward another catastrophic pandemic, not just pink eye and coughing in a few people.

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