An Environmental Article from All-Creatures.org

One Health: Including Animal Rights, Conservation, Human Population and Diet

From Michael W. Fox BVetMed, PhD, DSc, MRCVS
August 2023

As the human population increased, so did the rate of animal use for various culturally accepted and often financially-driven purposes. It was not until the early nineteenth century that various forms of exploitation, involving mistreatment and suffering, began to be questioned and animal protection and welfare organizations established. But we have yet to fully acknowledge the empathy, trust, loyalty, and devotion other animals have given us without question, since our earliest relationships with them.

Advancing social acceptance of animal rights and conservation has been protracted by vested interests for several decades. Their incorporation into the philosophy and praxis of One Health is integral to making progress in the realms of public health and economic security that have also been limited by lack of attention to the critical issues of diet, population, regenerative agriculture, and loss of natural biodiversity. Progress in One Health should not be conceptually limited or diverted by the profit-driven promotion of ever more vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides.

We need a more holistic and integrated approach to pest and disease management linking animal, environmental and human health would reduce over-reliance on vaccines, antibiotics, and pesticides in particular that can cause collateral harm to beneficial species, and, ultimately, to public health; but not negate the value of such agents when used in accord with the precautionary principle.

Many wild and domesticated animal species have served us in myriad ways for millennia in times of peace and war: For food, clothing, fuel, labor, protection, hunting, herding, tracking, guiding, transporting, rescue, communication, companionship, entertainment, exhibition, competition, education, and, more recently, as assistance-providers and co-therapists; to test military weapons and to advance human health through biomedical testing, research and creating animal models of disease and genetically engineering them to serve as organ donors.

Species include bees and other insects; frogs, pigeons, hawks, cormorants, dolphins, elephants, rats, rabbits, cats, and dogs, cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, equids, and camelids.

As the human population increased, so did the rate of animal use for various culturally accepted and often financially-driven purposes. It was not until the early nineteenth century that various forms of exploitation, involving mistreatment and suffering, began to be questioned and animal protection and welfare organizations established. But we have yet to fully acknowledge the empathy, trust, loyalty, and devotion other animals have given us without question, since our earliest relationships with them.

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

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