Wild meat industry

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#1
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Scallywag
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Apr 7 2020 12:08
Wild meat industry

I want to understand the links between habitat destruction, wildlife farming, capitalism and the emergence of new diseases. Anyone have any articles to share or anything to say about it?

How big is the wild meat industry in china and worldwide and what is the cause of that?

Does the destruction of habitat through logging, mining and agricultural make it easier for pathogens to emerge and how do they end up in wild food markets?

Do our methods of industrial agricultural and livestock farming make it easier for diseases to emerge in wildlife as well as livestock?

#2
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Scallywag
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Apr 7 2020 12:27

Already found these two

http://unevenearth.org/2020/04/this-pandemic-is-ecological-breakdown-dif...

https://climateandcapitalism.com/2020/03/11/capitalist-agriculture-and-c...

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spacious
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Apr 7 2020 14:36

Wildlife farming is an oxymoron, but captured wildlife is traded. And can be traded in the same markets and traded near places where livestock is grown on a large scale for human consumption, contributing to easier passage of viruses that may cause no serious harm to a wild animal (because they may have co-evolved over a long time), but be dangerous to livestock populations (bred with fast turnover times, so that the viruses that manage to make the jump are also trained and selected for a certain speed of transmission). Emergence of all of these conditions in areas where ecosystems are disrupted would be a very solid set of preconditions for emergence of viruses that may become pandemic in either farmed animals or in humans.

This is a summary of the work of Rob Wallace (see the top link posted by Scallywag), who is the scholar most focused on the interaction of all of these aspects, the role of commoditization and production for profit instead of sustainable livelihoods, and on the fact that pandemics thus essentially result from the specific social character of how we relate to nature.

Also check this with Mike Davis who wrote about avian flu:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOp9G5hoQnM

Seems a very solid and important critique to bring to the fore during and after this pandemic, hopefully it can contribute to upsetting the conditions for continued extractive agribusiness, meat farming and deforestation.

Rob Wallace - Covid-19 and the circuits of capital
https://monthlyreview.org/2020/04/01/covid-19-and-circuits-of-capital/

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Scallywag
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Apr 7 2020 21:56

Cheers Spacious! This helps clear things up a bit for me. smile

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spacious
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Apr 8 2020 18:31

You're welcome.
There's a lot of good background discussion and articles in this other topic here:
http://libcom.org/forums/news/capitalism-ecology-corinavirus-outbreak-09...

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Scallywag
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Apr 24 2020 21:50

Hi does anyone know if there is any way to get access to some of the academic papers that the above monthly review that Spacious shared references.I am not at uni so don't have any access to a lot of papers.

I am particularly interested in the point it makes about wild food being increasingly capitalized and pushed by the same capital forces pushing the expansion of agribusiness and 'backing development- and production-induced changes in land use and disease emergence in underdeveloped parts of the globe' then it references article 25

Emma G. E. Brooks, Scott I. Robertson, and Diana J. Bell, “The Conservation Impact of Commercial Wildlife Farming of Porcupines in Vietnam,” Biological Conservation 143, no. 11 (2010): 2808–14

Also if anyone can elaborate on that point that would be great and might be something we can use against all the idiots blaming Chinese people eating bats for the causing the pandemic if we can clearly link its cause to capitalism.

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adri
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Apr 25 2020 02:07

https://sci-hub.tw/ works for me

#8
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Scallywag
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May 13 2020 16:32

Both of these are good, they both link the emergence of coronavirus to the impact of globalisation and economic liberalisation in China, in terms of creating a market for wild meat which is eaten by a wealthier middle class as a thrill seeking display of wealth and in opening up in-land areas like Wuhan to international capitalism and creating the international commerce links that have allowed the virus to spread.

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/chinese-virus-world-mark...

https://theecologist.org/2020/mar/18/virus-haunting-europe-vector-capita...