A Vegan World Post-Pandemic?
News Peg
With COVID-19 continuing to spread across the globe, the United States on Thursday, March 26, became the country with the most positive cases crossing the 100,000 mark.
With millions of people quarantined around the globe, the coronavirus has caused nearly 2,000 deaths in the U.S., and significantly hurt the economy.
Experts in different departments have forecasted changes in their specific fields after the pandemic ends -
According to Global Workplace Analytics, companies will increase the frequency of working remotely even after offices open up, “nearly 25-30% of the workforce working at home in the next two years.”
Yum! Brands CEO David Gibbs told Yahoo! Finance that the fast food restaurants will be ready for the changes in the industry after the pandemic. “They will be more interested in things like contactless delivery that was rolled out initially,” he said. ““Certainly the best kiosk in the world is your mobile phone. It’s a portable kiosk and you can use it wherever you want and nobody else touches it.”
A decline in the polarization within nations and races across the globe may also occur, according to Peter Coleman, a Psychology professor at Columbia University. In his new book, “The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization,” Coleman predicts that political and cultural differences may decline around the world because COVID-19 has taught us to look past the differences and fight the “common enemy.” The “political shock wave” theory also points to scenarios throughout history where global catastrophes have shaken up interstate conflicts and patterns.
While these changes and other economic and social predictions may or may not occur after this pandemic, there is another important shift that can also potentially occur post-pandemic: the way we eat food - or more specifically, if meat consumption will decline, and vegan/vegetarianism will gain even more popularity.
The Facts
Public health experts state that that disease originated at a wet market in Wuhan, China, where vendors sell both live and death animals for human consumption.
The virus is said to potentially have originated from bats, but the pangolin mammal may have been the intermediary transferrer of COVID-19. The pangolin is the most trafficked mammal on the planet, according to the National Geographic. The mammal’s scales are considered delicacies in Chinese food markets, and strands of the virus were found in the pangolin.
PETA (People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals) stated, “We can’t ignore the link between meat and outbreaks of diseases like COVID-19. Humans’ insatiable demand for meat, eggs, and dairy means that huge numbers of animals are reared in intensive confinement in giant, filthy warehouses.”
Wildlife meat trading globally has consistently been linked to viruses and pandemics including the SARS outbreak 17 years ago, said to have originated from the civet cat.
The H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 2009 is said to have originated from pig confinement and consumption.
The H5N1 bird flu outbreak originated from chicken farms in China.
The past and recent major outbreaks clearly tell us the root cause of the viruses - meat trading and consumption.
“It is curious, therefore, that changing the way humans treat animals—most basically, ceasing to eat them or, at the very least, radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten—is largely off the radar as a significant preventive measure,” The American Public Health Association stated in a recent editorial.
The Change That Can Happen
Thus, it is important to consider the voice of the vegans and vegetarians of the world now more importantly than ever. The markets were slowly shifting in a direction of consideration and opportunity in such diets already.
The plant-based market in the last couple of years had seen legitimate growth through companies like Impossible Meats and Beyond Meat gaining popularity. Fast foods like White Castle, Burger King, and KFC had already adopted Beyond Meat products.
For those looking for alternate protein diets besides the intake of meat, or trying to eat healthy and stay fit, or adopting an ethical lifestyle, companies and food markets were opening arms in these last two years.
A Plant-Based Food Association and Good Food Institute report showed that U.S. retail sales of plant-based products increased by 11% from 2018 to 2019, making it a $4.5 billion industry.
With a pandemic as catastrophic as this one, spread by humans but founded upon the basic consumption of meat, this may be the spark necessary for veganism and vegetarianism to be valued even more so in households across the nation.
COVID-19 has certainly been an introspective journey for all of humanity. In this introspection, the decision is our’s - do we change or not? Extreme circumstances certainly call for extreme measures.
A circumstance like this may have been the necessary slap across the face for humanity to consider a food eating diet more ethical and nonviolent.