Originally published: What does it mean to live a “not quite fatal” existence? (seeingthewoods.org), September 2020

Like the avian and swine flu outbreaks before it, the jump of Covid-19 from animal to human “hosts” was made more likely by [intensive industrial farming]. Ordinarily, much of this process is hidden, as is the shared biology that makes many mammals and birds susceptible to the same diseases.

Yet as viral outbreaks have shown, broilers are not sterile commodities, and animal bodies threaten us precisely because their immune systems are similar (enough) to ours. We would do well to make kin with chickens, pigs, and pangolins.

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Main image: Otwarte Klatki via Flickr.

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