As I shared in a previous blog, animal rights activist groups are stooping to new lows as they attempt to take advantage of public fears and concerns around the current pandemic. People are looking for any ways they can keep their families safe, and activists are trying to tell them that avoiding meat and ending animal agriculture would help with that.

This is deeply frustrating, especially as farmers, ranchers, processing plant employees, grocery store workers and restaurant staff continue their essential work day-in and day-out to keep food available as most of us remain at home and companies are making difficult choices to close plants in the interest of keeping their employees and communities safe.

It’s up to all of us in the meat industry to set the record straight and debunk the myths that we continue to see spread on social media and in the opinion pages of newspapers. I approached a few public health and animal health experts to weigh in and help correct this narrative.

Dr. Richard Raymond, former Undersecretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (and former Meatingplace blogger), said that there is no connection between animal agriculture and the current COVID-19 pandemic. He explained, “There has been no source identified for the current coronavirus and there is certainly no link to food animals or animal production. It started in a multi-million population center in China, nowhere near any large food animal operations.”

Dr. Raymond went on to contest activist groups’ implication that eating meat could somehow put you at greater risk of being infected with COVID-19: “Eating meat might put one at risk of being infected with E coli or Salmonella if not properly handled and cooked to the right temperature, but COVID-19 is spread via the air, or aerosolized, not from eating anything, be it meat or veggies.”

Activist groups are also claiming that large-scale, modern animal agriculture is to blame for disease spread, but experts debunked that notion as well. Dr. Dan Thomson, chair of the Department of Animal Science at Iowa State University and former professor of production medicine and epidemiology at Kansas State University, said, “If anything, modern agriculture helps prevent infectious disease outbreaks by not allowing our domestic animals contact with environment contaminated by wild species of animals such as surface water or other environmental contaminants. Modern agriculture allows us to monitor animal health daily and quickly mitigate animal health issues.”

Dr. Randy Singer, professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota agreed, adding “the high level of biosecurity used by modern animal agriculture has resulted in a greatly decreased risk of disease spread.”

I encourage everyone involved in animal agriculture and the meat industry to be vigilant in responding to misinformation that could call into question both the safety of our products and our impact on public health. With misinformation spreading like wildfire, we need to reassure our consumers and customers that they can be confident in purchasing and preparing meat and poultry, now and into the future.

No, animal agriculture is not to blame for COVID-19

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