The world’s growing population and food-supply chains are making it easier for animal diseases to jump to humans, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warns, according to a report in AllAfrica.

About 70 percent of new diseases that have infected humans in recent decades came from animals, the report said.

The U.N. released a new report, “World Livestock 2013: Changing Disease Landscapes,” that says those landscapes have become “vastly more complicated” by human activity.

“We’ll only see more diseases emerge, more natural resources disappear and more threats to human health in the food chain,” said Juan Lubroth, the agency’s chief
veterinary officer. They’re conditions he described as the “perfect microbial storm.”

Contributing to the problem are issues such as climate change (particularly humidity and tropical weather) and increased globalization (more traffic across the world, people traveling more, more trade) — all these are encroaching into habitats “that previously we did not really know those ecological niches were occupied by other species. But we are
invading them,” Lubroth said.

Inadequate healthcare and sanitation infrastructure raise the risk of disease in poor areas. And as population grows, livestock production intensifies, which has its own set of risks.

“As we intensify livestock production, we have created…a monoculture,” Lubroth said. “By using antibiotics, for example, as growth promoters or antibiotics without the supervision of qualified personnel, we do allow for disease-resistant organisms to go throughout the herd or throughout the community. And this can, at the end, affect human health.”

Diseases that have likely jumped from animals to humans, Lubroth said, include HIV, which causes AIDS, and “probably had its precursor in something that we know today to be simian or monkey immunodeficiency virus.”

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which is caused by a corona virus, likely has an animal origin, he said.

Other diseases that emerged from animals over the last five-to-10 years include the Nipah and Hendra viruses usually found in bats.

The H5N1 avian flu spread in Southeast Asia in 2003 and by 2006 was present in more than 60 countries.

The U.N. calls for a holistic approach to meet the growing disease threat
involving scientists, researchers, doctors and others from many disciplines working together and sharing information.

The report said the holistic approach includes reducing poverty, addressing biological threats posed by globalization and climate change and better safety and health measures in livestock production.

Lubroth promotes “tackling the disease at its source”: isolating a potential outbreak at a particular location, village or town before it can spread, AllAfrica reports.