Zoonotic disease risks in fashion

Today, almost 3 million people and counting have died of COVID-19, with over 130 million infection cases recorded so far. Unsurprisingly, our fears around the spread of zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19, or even worse, continue to rise. As a total ethics fashion organisation, we’re asking, what responsibility does the fashion industry have to help prevent zoonotic disease spread?

What is a zoonotic disease?

A zoonotic disease is any infectious disease that is transmitted from non-human animals, to humans. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that 75% of emerging pathogens - viruses, bacteria and so on that cause disease - over the last decade, have been zoonotic. In fact, at least 61% of all human pathogens are zoonotic.

COVID-19 is far from the first zoonotic disease we’ve battled, and it won’t be the last, unless we take action now. From swine-flu to avian-flu and MERS-COV, zoonotic diseases are regularly and increasingly infection humans. Diseases emerge due to the unjust treatment of non-human animals who we confine to factory-farms, who we trap in the wild, who we kill, eat and wear. Even today, new strains of zoonotic diseases are popping up all over the world, from a new strain of pig flu with ‘pandemic potential found on pig farms’, to millions of chickens who are being ‘destroyed’ en masse across some parts of both Asia and Europe, due to bird flu outbreaks.

“[Zoonotic pathogens] represent a major public health problem around the world due to our close relationship with animals in agriculture, as companions and in the natural environment... Agricultural workers in areas with a high use of antibiotics for farm animals may be at increased risk of pathogens resistant to current antimicrobial drugs” - WHO

Factory-farms and animal markets imprison large numbers of live, wild and farmed animals, as well as those who are dead and butchered, in awful and unsanitary conditions. These conditions compromise their immunity, resulting in animals becoming ill. Because these animals are in close contact with others, including humans, diseases easily spread, even between species. This is why farms and animal markets are breeding grounds for zoonotic diseases, and why zoonotic diseases are either found or traced back to farms or animal markets - whether to farm workers, slaughterhouse workers, or consumers who have contact with animals who are kept in these unsanitary, disease-prone conditions.

Factory-farms and animal markets are terrible places. Animals are confined in cages, stalls or barns, often for their entire, shortened lives. They are forced to live in areas full of their own excrement, that are almost never regularly cleaned. They are made to live amongst other sick, dying and dead animals. These are some of the reasons why up to 80% of global antibiotics are fed to farmed animals. This in turn leads to antibiotic resistant pathogens developing, and becoming harder to control. When we have contact with these sick non-human animals, viruses can mutate and transfer to humans, causing us as a species to sugar by getting infected with zoonotic diseases, too.

What’s fashion got to do with it?

When we wear animal-derived materials, we are buying into supply-chains that involve slaughterhouses, factory-farms, and wild-set traps for animals. In just the same way chickens and pigs can become infected with diseases that spread to us, animals we wear can become sick, too. It’s for this reason, that the fashion industry has a responsibility to transition away from the use of animal-derived materials, which increase our risk of further zoonotic disease outbreaks, and the suffering and deaths caused by disease outbreaks.

The fur industry

In April 2020 the first COVID-19 infections were found on fur farms and have since spread to almost all fur producing regions. Fur farms in Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Italy, France, Poland, Greece, Lithuania, Canada and the United States have been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. These outbreaks led to new COVID-19 cases in human patients.

The northern regions of Denmark, where most fur farms in the country are located, were put under strict lockdown while 17 million minks were killed - destroying every animal in every cage. Several other countries have carried out ‘culls’, including the Netherlands, which killed millions of mink.

Jonathan Runstadler, a professor in the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, who works in the department of infectious disease and global health, stated that the outbreak in minks was not surprising to many in his field, partly due to the conditions minks and other animals farmed for fur are forced to live in.

Similar culls are happening across the world, as are bans on fur farming - some temporary, many permanent. These bans are in part due to the risk of zoonotic disease spread, and sometimes due to an evolution beyond a cruel industry - as was the case for Poland, which voted to ban fur farming after an investigation on one of the world’s largest fur farms showed horrific cruelty. These bans cannot continue to come into place soon enough.

The exotic skin industry

Luxury fashion often makes use of the skins of wild animals in the creation of shoes, wallets, bags and belts - including those who are illegally killed and traded. In fact, the fashion industry is the largest importer of illegal wildlife into the US, potentially impacting wild populations.

Conservation experts have warned that the global trade of exotic animals skins - like those from lizards, snakes, stingrays, crocodiles, alligators and other animals - can contribute to the spread of zoonotic diseases that infect humans.

Snakes, who are often captured from their natural homes, are documented being killed in horrific ways - by being inflated like balloons, by blunt force or spikes forced through their heads and bodies. This bloody treatment of wild animals can infect humans with diseases we may otherwise not come into contact with - putting surrounding human communities at risk, too.

What can we do?

The single most important thing we can all do to prevent further zoonotic disease outbreak, is to stop buying any more animal-derived materials.

We can also work to ban these materials from being produced, sold and used. You can take part in our current campaign to ban fur, or learn more about building your own community pressure campaign.