Opinion: The wellness industry is killing animals, spreading disease, and fueling the next pandemic
Cats and dogs are dying because of growth of raw pet food, which might also help create the next pandemic.
The $6.3 trillion wellness industry thrives on distrust of science, glorifying “natural” alternatives, and fear-based marketing. The result? Pseudoscience that’s not just harming human health. It’s killing animals, too, specifically via H5N1 bird flu.
Holistic pet health influencers, organic farmers, and alternative medicine advocates embrace behaviors that increase the risk of viral transmission, paving the way for a potential human pandemic. It’s already killed pets. And now, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s virtual erasure of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, the very department tasked with overseeing, monitoring, and responding to the ongoing H5N1 outbreak, it will most certainly worsen.
