'Not if, But When' campaign approaches 500,000 views

Last Saturday, our brand new Not If, But When campaign went live.

Our brand new Not If, But When campaign is centred around discussing the inextricable link between animal farming and infectious zoonotic disease. As a recent UN report has further highlighted, animal farming and animal exploitation have to be eliminated if we are to reduce our risk of future pandemics, because simply put, whilst we have animal farms we will have pandemics.

The first video of the campaign is centred on swine flu, a disease that has recently made headlines due to the growing concern around a strain called G4 EA H1N1 that is becoming more troubling. The strain was recently classified as having pandemic potential, and although it hasn’t yet developed effective human to human transmission, it could mutate at any point to be able to do so, at which point it would become a serious concern for public health.

Swine flu viruses have killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the last influenza pandemic was the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, a pandemic that started in Mexico, but the genetic lineage of which was traced back to a pig farm in North Carolina. This is one the most troubling aspects of influenza viruses, such as swine flu, they are not geographically specific and can be found all around the world. Likewise, the next pandemic could start in any country, and with our current strategy of only monitoring infectious zoonotic disease, as opposed to actually dealing with the root problem, the next pandemic could arise at any moment.