Thank you, Mr. Chair, and committee members for the invitation to testify on Bill C-293.
I'm the campaign director at World Animal Protection. We're an international animal welfare charity with offices in 12 countries.
We conduct a lot of research on the intersectionality of animal health and welfare, environmental sustainability and human health. That research then informs our policy recommendations that we bring. Those intersections really are what “one health" is all about.
We have general consultative status with the United Nations. We have a formal working relationship with the World Organization for Animal Health and we're members of the National Farm Animal Care Council.
Joining with me today is Michèle Hamers, our wildlife campaign manager, who has an M.Sc. in animal biology and is co-author of the first published article on Canada's wildlife trade, specifically on the potential for disease risk and the lack of data and monitoring for it.
You may be wondering why an animal welfare group wants to testify on this bill. Seventy-five per cent of new and emerging infectious diseases originate in animals, principally from wildlife. It is our mistreatment of animals and exploitation of nature that is driving the frequency and severity of diseases, and it's not just us who are saying that. It is repeatedly cited in various UN reports like the report by the United Nations Environment Programme on pandemics, or the report by IPBES on pandemics, with regard to Mpox, Ebola, SARS, MERS, West Nile virus, Nipah, Zika, COVID-19.
It is widely acknowledged that a wildlife market played a significant role in the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it was originating the origins of the virus or amplifying it. These markets typically hold a variety of different animal species that wouldn't normally encounter each other in the wild. They are kept in cramped, stressful and often unsanitary conditions. These are called hotbeds for emerging diseases. When animals are stressed they become more vulnerable to infections and they become more infectious. That is why this is very much an animal welfare problem at the core.
We strongly support this bill because it takes a “one-health" approach and puts emphasis on prevention, it identifies the top pandemic drivers and requires government to address those drivers and mitigate those risks.
So often prevention is viewed as increasing surveillance and monitoring, but surveillance cannot detect asymptomatic animals that carry disease, nor does it prevent pathogen mutation and emergence. Scientists have warned that we are entering a pandemic era. If we truly want to reverse course, we must include pre-outbreak measures to prevent spillover at the human-animal-environment interface.
To quote from the IPBES report, “Without preventative strategies, pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, kill more people and affect the global economy with more devastating impact than ever before.”
Tackling the root causes of spillover is a fraction of the cost of responding to a pandemic. One study found that halting deforestation and regulating the wildlife trade could cost as little as 2% of the economic cost of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is also critically important that this bill mentions well-known pandemic drivers. These are already identified in the scientific literature by credible authorities and global agreements that Canada has committed to.
These drivers include the illegal and under-regulated legal wildlife trade, which is growing in volume, live animal markets, intensive farming methods, and land use changes. These have been identified, again, in the UNEP report and the IPBES report, which I believe are available to you.
The current draft of the World Health Organization's international pandemic instrument also mentions the need to address disease drivers including, but not limited to, climate change, land use change, the wildlife trade, desertification and antimicrobial resistance. Bill C-293 would help Canada fulfill its obligations to this new global agreement.
The World Health Organization refers to the rise in antimicrobial resistance as the silent pandemic and one of the biggest public health concerns of the 21st century. This relates back to animal welfare because three-quarters of all antimicrobials used in Canada and around the world are given to farm animals. For decades, these preventative antibiotics have been given in the absence of clinical disease to stop stressed animals from getting sick and to facilitate intensive farming methods.
Thank you for your time.