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Comment by factotvm | Hacker News Reader

I’m curious to know if you think the animals the west consume which cause disease are satisfactory.

Not if they are from wild populations, or raised in a way that they could be exposed to viruses from wild populations, or if they are endangered species.

I’m not sure being wild is a good indicator. I would think the opposite might be true wherein industrial farming and close quarters would cause more disease, just like how we talk about population density and covid-19. If you aren’t exposed to others, disease can’t spread. For instance, H1N1 didn’t start in the wild. And it didn’t start with an exotic animal. But it was a global pandemic.

The only position you can safely hold is to not eat meat. A weaker position could be around the sanitation and care of stock and its preparation. But what you eat doesn’t matter, be it pig or dog or squirrel or bat.

I'd say that capturing wild animals, then keeping them in cramped unsanitary conditions, along with other species, is the worst possible option for disease. Industrial farming only does one of those three.

That's a bit like the fallacy of relative privation: Because what the west does isn't as bad, they aren't culpable. Again, there was a global pandemic caused by pig farming just 11 short years ago, and everybody is still eating bacon.

> there was a global pandemic caused by pig farming just 11 short years ago

This is disingenuous. That was nothing like this pandemic.

No it’s not. Nobody is saying that the 2009 swine flu pandemic was anything but that. It was a global pandemic.

Don’t say seat belts don’t matter for us because the other car was a hatchback instead of a pickup. They were both still car accidents.

Sure, but you need some threshold, otherwise you conclude you can never buy anything or see another person. "Buy no meat" is not fully safe either, so that's not the objective place to draw the line.

And I'm not trying to make an argument about "the west", it's just about specific animals and ways to get them.

So long as that threshold is based on science and not, “they eat weird stuff,” I’m okay with that.

If the threshold is: has caused pandemic, then swine is off the table, pun intended.

"has caused a global pandemic" would be a terrible threshold. The set of global pandemics is far too small to draw meaningful conclusions about risk. We have other data about viruses in animals that should be used.

You’re missing my point. If the argument is: "We're in the middle of a global pandemic quite possibly caused by Chinese people consuming animals that shouldn't be consumed,” then I would like to be clear that swine should also not be consumed, as they too have caused a global pandemic.

You're missing my point. That statement is not my argument about which specific animals should be consumed. It's my argument about the parent comment's statement, which I am simply responding to and did not even claim myself, that Chinese people eat a wider variety of animals than we do in the US, and the behavior of eating a wider variety of animals should be considered "open minded," implying (and again this is the parent comment's argument, not mine) that the practice of eating a narrower variety of animals should be considered "closed minded". My argument was that the timing of said statement from the parent comment is extremely unfortunate given the fact that the current global pandemic likely originated in animals consumed in China and generally not in the US, and the general idea of restricting animal consumption for health reasons should not be considered "closed minded". That's it.

Now, that statement assumes that some animals have higher risk of transmitting novel viruses to humans than others, and if you disagree with that then you'll disagree with the statement, but the statement itself was not an argument about that point. Subsequently we have further argued about that specific point. I don't believe that decisions about which animals to consume should be based on cultural factors as you assume, but rather I believe that it should be based on relevant science (not simply "has this specific animal caused a global pandemic in recent history"). I believe that science does not support the idea that all animals or animal procurement practices have identical risk of transmitting novel viruses to humans. Therefore I support the idea of restricting consumption of some animals, especially wild ones (including some currently consumed in the US), and reject the idea that this is simply "closed minded".

Unfortunately the inclusion of the single word "Chinese" in my original comment has blinded everyone to the argument I was making, despite the fact that it was simply a response to the parent comment. It would have been a better comment, and made the same point, without the word "Chinese" in it. Please strike that word from my original comment and read it again.

You're right, I'm sure farming practices could be improved to help prevent pandemics. But it is false to say that all animals carry the same level of risk, and forgoing meat entirely is far from the only option to reduce risk.

How do you quantify the risk, and where is the line drawn?

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