The emergence of zoonotic diseases from animals to humans is closely linked to animal welfare conditions. Crowded, stressed animals in live markets and intensive farms create ideal conditions for novel pathogen evolution and spillover.
Zoonotic disease prevention and animal welfare improvement are mutually reinforcing. Reducing factory farm density reduces both animal stress and pathogen evolution opportunity. Ending live wildlife markets removes a key spillover interface. Protecting bat and primate habitat reduces human-wildlife contact risk. These welfare improvements also reduce pandemic risk, creating a compelling case for investment from public health as well as animal welfare perspectives. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the catastrophic human cost of inadequate attention to the animal-human disease interface. Animal welfare advocates have a powerful argument: improving animal conditions is simultaneously a welfare and a public health investment. This argument can help build coalitions between health and welfare advocates.