The pandemic of covid-19 has highlighted its existence in the global community. It started from a single city and then spreaded across 188 countries globally with infecting 30 million people by the end of 2020. Today it’s also showing its effects and impact with the potential of leaving its impact not just on human society but at the same time on the animal productions. The Covid 19 impact on the food supply chain and specifically on the livestock production was unexpected. There evolved a good number of cases in the meat market as well as the meat processing plant that affected a huge population of human, animals as well as environmental welfare. In case of processing plants, the major issue is to maintain hygiene and focus on product quality with food safety. Because of this kind of close proximity to one another, the COVID 19 is spreading rapidly between the workers and even there is lack of sick leave and health insurance which resulted in continuous suffering of people from infection.
The reason being discussed under various research and reports says it to be the unprecedented nature of the pandemic and mysteries relating to the new variants of the virus. This might require innovative approach to tackle it and at a time when much of uncertainty remains with many more works still needs to be undertaken to understand how the emergence of virus has taken place. Apart from that the way it entered the human body and collaboration across the sectors being the key to respond to the crisis.
COVID -19 and wild life
The COVID 19 is believed to have originated in the wildlife market in Wuhan, china. The current pandemic is far from the only public health crisis that is traced back into wild animals. The current pandemic is far from the only public health crisis that traced back to wild animals. It was in 2003, SARS that passed from civets to humans in case of Chinese wild life market. It’s also believed that Ebola and HIV like diseases also were transmitted to humans from bush meat hunting.
Later in the month of October, the reports released by the United Nations experts warned that the wild life trade and consumption represented one of the main risks leading to the future pandemics. It warned that the pandemic will emerge more often with spreading more rapidly and killing more people. This affected the global economy with more negative impact than ever before. The wild animal markets were kept crowded and the animals were slaughtered on site. This can lead to spreading of bodily fluids like blood and feces. Then legally there was call for ban on the sale of live wild animals in the markets. This was to protect human health and the humane society international released a white paper detailing about the connection between the wild life markets and the COVID-19. This later was sent to the governments globally asking for proper action. In the US, the HSUS advocated for the passage of the preventing future pandemics ACT OF 2020, this would ban the import, export and sale of certain wild life that related for human consumption.
Previous records
In the month of February, china implemented a temporary ban of hunting trade and transport with the use of terrestrial wild animals for food purpose. But it’s not yet made permanent. This also doesn’t include wild animals used for traditional medicine, fur, research and pets. As doctors believed that ban on consumption of wild life is not enough as nothing that the other usages could be breeding grounds for the pandemic out breaks as well. It’s an inadequacy of country wide information on relevant aspects that have been a major bottleneck for better understanding of the impact of the pandemic and prolonged lockdown on different sub sectors of livestock and poultry. Even attempts have been made to have an in depth analysis of the subject with collaboration of published materials as well as information collected through public contacts. Further to make the best of summary of the events relating to the pandemic.
Even countries like Argentina faced the pandemic by passing the order of strict nationwide quarantine and severe restrictions on human contact. This was done to prevent the spread of the virus. The country was reported to have little disruption in the animal agriculture in part of the ability to move the beef products from traditional markets to other countries. For this, the agricultural conditions as well as the economic conditions in Argentina worsened and this might have also worst consequences on animal agriculture and even countries like US also faced abrupt decrease in the food service sector which is coupled up with an over purchase of goods by concerned consumers and with a subsequent disruption in the supply chain.
Impact on breeding industry
The impact of corona has left immense results on the breeding industry as well. The industry today is facing a lot of problems from decreased breeding records and reductions in the government supports. Looking ahead to the genetics areas, the effect is not yet known. But the impact is noted both on breeding and genetics as there were disruptions in the mobility, restriction of movement of goods and supplies across the borders, disruptions in the international trade and the need to work from home and away from critical interactions with the colleagues. With this the pandemic has little or direct effects on domestic animal production, through secondary effects as workers in this industry are getting affected more. The countries are experiencing significant illness and mortality rate of the people as well as businesses relating to the poultry, meat, fisheries and milk industry are getting lowered day by day. The reduced services into the animal production relatively associates with the people and their services. For corona have been a deadly disease giving a shut down or lock down to the system completely is harming every single segment of the animal and their production processes.
