DEAR READERS: The CDC states: ”Zoonotic diseases are very common, both in the United States and around the world. Scientists estimate that more than 6 out of every 10 known infectious diseases in people can be spread from animals, and 3 out of every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals.”

COVID-19 is a wake-up call. After its first wave of global socioeconomic disruption, we must reassess how the consumption of wild and farmed animals can cause epidemics, pandemics and regional outbreaks of food poisoning, and begin to transition from meat-eating omnivores to vegetarians and vegans.

Humans should keep out of wildlife habitats where such diseases emerge, to which we have no immunity. Consumers in industrial countries must support producers of organically certified foods to sustain a healthful vegetarian/vegan diet with minimal or zero consumption of eggs, dairy and meat, including seafood. Overfishing for human consumption, and to feed farmed animals, is one factor in the demise of the oceans. Large fish like tuna are contaminated with mercury, and farmed salmon can be high in dioxins. One-third of all fish caught globally are fed to farmed fish, further depleting the oceans.

America’s great prairies and other grasslands around the world have been degraded by overgrazing livestock. Millions of acres have been plowed up, and wetlands drained, to produce GMO corn and soybeans to be fed to livestock and poultry -- and to export to other countries like China, all at the cost of topsoil, water quality and increased carbon emissions. This all aggravates climate change and furthers the loss of biodiversity.

So we are all to blame, as a species that continues to regard other animals as dietary staples, creating anthropogenic zoonotic diseases in the process -- notably antibiotic-resistant bacteria from factory-farmed animals and strains of influenza from pigs and chickens. It is “species-ist” to claim that animals were created for our own use, and that we can kill, consume and exploit them as our needs and wants dictate.

For more details about this emerging disease, see my article “What Coronavirus COVID-19 Is Telling Us: A Holistic Veterinary and One Health View,” posted on my website (drfoxonehealth.com).

DEAR DR. FOX: Your recent article was the best I have ever read on the problems with diseases such as COVID-19. Would you please do the country and the world a favor by submitting it to the New York Times as an op-ed piece, so it has the greatest distribution? -- Dr. James Powell, retired dean of Arts and Sciences, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, South Bend

DEAR DR. POWELL: I greatly appreciate your approval of my Animal Doctor newspaper column entries concerning this coronavirus pandemic. This is a complex issue that cannot be compressed into a short newspaper review.

At best, all the suffering, death, grieving and economic impact of this latest COVID-19 pandemic will change how we choose to live: most especially our collective exploitation and consumption of animals, wild and domesticated. This brings on such pandemics and other zoonotic diseases, along with accelerating climate change and loss of biodiversity.

LET YOUR CAT OUT AND FEED THE COYOTES

I have written repeatedly to advise cat owners not to let their cats roam free, especially because of their killing of wild birds and other creatures. Here is one more reason to keep cats indoors: California State University, Northridge, professor Tim Karels, et al., with the National Park Service, found that cat remains were found in 20% of the poop of urban coyotes in Southern California, compared to 4% in suburban coyotes.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR DR. FOX: My little girl, Emee, is 10 years old, and has been a lap dog forever. But she has suddenly developed a need to be around me constantly. She wants to sit with me, and follows me wherever I go. When I go to bed, she wants to cuddle right next to me, with her body and head covered. Is this normal? -- A.N., Naples, Florida

DEAR A.N.: There could be one of two issues going on between you and your dog. Considering your dog’s age, she could be feeling more insecure and anxious because she is not feeling well -- possibly kidney or liver problems, or she might be losing eyesight or hearing. So I would advise a wellness examination with her veterinarian. When was her last checkup? If they insist on giving your dog any vaccines other than a rabies shot, which may be overdue, then decline.

The second possibility is that your dog, whose nose is far more sensitive than ours, is detecting a change in your body odor, which could mean you have some health issue that calls for a medical checkup. Dogs have become more attentive and seemingly concerned about their owners who have turned out to have such health issues as diabetes and breast cancer.

DEAR DR. FOX: In reference to the “dog’s foul smell” another reader mentioned: I have had a stinky/fishy smell from my dog, and it turned out to be her anal glands. That sounds like at least part of the problem. -- J.M. Trenton, New Jersey

DEAR J.M.: Yes indeed, when a dog’s anal glands are overactive, often because of inflammation and sometimes because of a dietary allergy, some of the stinky secretion can leak out where the dog is lying. In the process of self-cleaning, the dog may then seem to just have bad breath. Normally some anal gland secretion is passed out every time the dog defecates, possibly as a social signal. Lack of exercise, constipation and obesity can often lead to the two anal gland sacks filling up and suddenly being discharged in the home.

When dogs develop a chronic anal gland problem, regular manual emptying is needed. In some instances, irrigation under light anesthesia is necessary to flush out the sacs and put in appropriate medication. A change in diet and increasing the fiber content, as with psyllium husks, can also be beneficial.

DEAR DR. FOX: Recently, you answered a letter from a grandparent considering getting their grandchild a reticulated python as a pet. You wisely advised against it for various reasons, including the risk of environmental harm if the snake should escape, as is well-documented in the Florida Everglades.

But you neglected to mention perhaps the most compelling argument against it: The reticulated python is one of the world’s largest snakes, and when fully grown at over 20 feet, can easily overpower and kill any human on Earth. As well, it is not generally considered very docile like its Burmese cousin. Even among experienced “herps,” the reticulated python is considered suitable for experts only, with extensive (and expensive) habitats. -- F.R., Animal Control Officer, Tulsa, Oklahoma

DEAR F.R.: I really appreciate the work you do, and your advice. I urge everyone not to purchase such “exotic” species for a host of reasons -- many are poached from the wild and die in transit, for one thing. All imports should be banned for humane, conservation and public health reasons. Those bred in captivity often die soon after purchase, since few people can provide the right habitats for them, or they escape or are deliberately released when no longer wanted. There is debate in the U.K. concerning the welfare of snakes so often kept in small, environmentally impoverished containers, in which they can never even stretch out to full length. Children should stick to tried-and-true rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs and gerbils, ideally in same-sex pairs for social stimulation.

Funny story: While walking our dogs when we lived in Washington D.C., I found a beautiful 5-foot-long reticulated python curled up on the sidewalk. I picked up the reptile behind the neck and he/she curled around my arm to get warm. So I walked home with a snake on my arm -- better than a tattoo -- and presented it to my wife as her birthday surprise, since it was her birthday. We celebrated saving such an extraordinary animal, then called Animal Control, which took it to a wildlife sanctuary. On another walk, we saw a shell moving down the road that contained a hermit crab. It was a small miracle that we found a woman who had a hermit crab, who took our “Hermie” to live with hers for company, providing bigger shells as the crabs grew!

PIGS EAT PEDOMETER, START FIRE

A fire at a pig farm in England was started when pigs ate a pedometer and passed copper from the battery, which then reacted with the animals’ waste and ignited. Pigs at the farm are fitted with pedometers to prove they are not confined. (United Press International, 3/10)

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR READERS: As you may be aware, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is in the same category as the one responsible for the epidemic of SARS (Sudden Onset Respiratory Syndrome) in the early 2000s. The two viruses are also sadly linked to animal cruelty.

The SARS epidemic infected more than 8,000 people in 26 countries and killed at least 774, the vast majority in China and Hong Kong. When the virus was linked to civets, Chinese authorities ordered the deaths of some 10,000 civets by drowning and electrocution. (The precursor virus was found to be present in wild Rhinolophus bats.) Civets and other small mammals sold as delicacies in “wet markets” provided a reservoir and amplifier for the virus, and the opportunity for adaptation to humans -- a similar fashion to how the COVID-19 virus got its foothold.

There are degrees of inhumanity and cruel treatment of animals for which we unwittingly pay the price. In Ethiopia, civets are held in small cages and have their anal glands routinely scraped out to “harvest” musk for the perfume industry; in Indonesia, these animals are caged and force-fed coffee beans that are then collected in their feces and sold as gourmet “fermented” beans called kopi luwak. Such practices reflect the depravity that surfaces where the lure of money meets a lack of empathy. This is exemplified especially by China’s bear-bile farms, where bears, constantly confined in cramped cages, have abdominal cannulas collecting their bile for sale as medicine. (One of the alleged “cures” from traditional Chinese medicine that the government recommends for treating severe, critical cases of COVID-19 is an injection of Tan Re Qing, which contains bear bile, National Geographic reported.)

While nation after nation goes through the socioeconomic turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic disease -- originating from animals alive and dead being sold in a market in China for human consumption -- I appeal to all consumers and governments to consider the impossibility of preventing such pandemics and other animal product-borne epidemics and regional outbreaks. It is impossible because of the enormous scale of animal production -- billions of poultry and pigs worldwide that are the primary source of various strains of influenza virus and antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. This problem is so serious in poultry that their carcasses are washed in bleach; the U.K. refuses to accept America’s chlorine-treated chicken under current trade negotiations.

The U.S. government and meat scientists explored sterilizing such produce using radioactive isotopes, but this move was temporarily blocked by health and safety experts. Such radiation produces radiolytic-breakdown products, the safety of which to consumers has been questioned. Such concerns gained some affirmation with the death of cats in Australia after being fed imported canned cat food that was, under import regulations, subjected to irradiation. (For details, visit https://truthaboutpetfood.com/was-irradiated-pet-food-the-cause-of-cat-deaths-in-australia.)

Regardless, meat and poultry in the U.S. is being irradiated, and producers who use ionized radiation to kill pathogens in products now have expanded options, thanks to two rules published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (For more, visit foodsafetynews.com/2012/12/fda-expands-irradiation-uses-for-meat-and-poultry.)

COMPANION ANIMALS TEST NEGATIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS SO FAR

Veterinary diagnostics firm Idexx has tested more than 3,500 samples from dogs, cats and horses for infection with the virus that causes COVID-19, and none of the tests have been positive. The findings support experts’ assertions that pets are unlikely to catch or transmit the disease. However, the virus could become attached to animals’ fur, and the CDC says people should avoid kissing pets and should wash their hands after touching them.

A German shepherd dog in Hong Kong whose owner tested positive for COVID-19 was put in quarantine, along with a mixed-breed dog from the same household. While neither dog has clinical signs of the disease, the German shepherd’s test was positive, and the other dog’s was negative. The AVMA, CDC and World Organization for Animal Health say there is no evidence that companion animals can transmit the virus that causes the disease, and authorities say there is no justification for abandoning pets.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)