Globalization: Diseases Spreading From Humans to Animals, Study Finds

For the first time since animal domestication 10,000 years ago, a disease has spread from humans to animals. A new study from the University of Edinburgh shows how a version of the staph infection started in humans, spread to chickens, and then spread throughout the global poultry industry. Diseases are a major threat to the poultry industry. One of the study’s authors suggests that the global concentration of the industry that uses only a few breeding lines, which means less diversity of resistance, is helping spread the diseases and endangering the supply of meat. But such danger is also the result of the shift from its use mainly as a source of eggs to chicken as a source of meat over the past 50 years. When shifting tastes, global industry, and bacteria intersect, the results are rarely predictable. −YaleGlobal