ABSTRACT

There is growing evidence of the interconnectivity between animals, humans, and the environment, which has manifested in the One Health perspective that takes all three into account for a more comprehensive vision of health. Over the past century, agriculture has become increasingly industrialized with a particular rise in the amount of livestock raised and meat produced. In order to fulfill such market demands, livestock farmers and agricultural corporations have artificially selected for and bred their cash animals to be more and more metabolically efficient via genetic and human-driven means. However, by selecting for more metabolically efficient animals, we may have inadvertently been selecting for obesogenic gut microbiota. This is further compounded by the potential obesogenic and microbiome-altering role antibiotics play in livestock. Evidence suggests that there is the potential for interspecies gut microbe transmissibility. It is notable that there has been a concurrent multispecies obesity epidemic across the same timeframe, which raises questions about potential connections between these epidemics. If it is the case that humans have inadvertently influenced their own obesity epidemic via the artificial selection of and antibiotic administration to livestock, then this holds significant ethical implications. This analysis considers current meat consumption trends, the impacts of livestock on climate change, and animal ethics. The paper concludes that due to the potential significant impact yet tenuous nature of the evidence on this subject stemming from research silos, there is a definitive ethical impetus for researchers to bridge these silos to better understand the true nature of the issue. This case is emblematic of an overarching ethics-driven need for deeper collaboration between isolated but related research disciplines to better characterize issues of public health relevance. It also raises concerns regarding inherent value-driven strife that may arise between competing One Health domains.

 抽象的

越来越多的证据表明动物、人类和环境之间的相互联系，这体现在“同一个健康”观点中，该观点将这三者考虑在内，以形成更全面的健康愿景。在过去的一个世纪里，农业日益工业化，牲畜饲养和肉类生产量尤其增加。为了满足这种市场需求，畜牧农民和农业公司通过遗传和人类驱动的手段，人为地选择和培育他们的经济动物，使其代谢效率越来越高。然而，通过选择代谢效率更高的动物，我们可能无意中选择了致肥胖的肠道微生物群。抗生素对牲畜潜在的致肥胖和改变微生物组的作用进一步加剧了这一问题。有证据表明肠道微生物存在跨物种传播的可能性。值得注意的是，在同一时间范围内同时存在多物种肥胖流行病，这引发了对这些流行病之间潜在联系的疑问。如果人类通过对牲畜的人工选择和抗生素施用无意中影响了自身的肥胖流行，那么这就会产生重大的伦理影响。该分析考虑了当前的肉类消费趋势、牲畜对气候变化的影响以及动物伦理。该论文的结论是，由于研究孤岛对这一主题的证据具有潜在的重大影响，但其性质却很脆弱，因此研究人员有明确的道德动力来弥合这些孤岛，以更好地了解问题的真正本质。 该案例象征着道德驱动的总体需求，即孤立但相关的研究学科之间需要进行更深入的合作，以更好地表征与公共卫生相关的问题。它还引起了人们对竞争“同一个健康”领域之间可能出现的内在价值驱动冲突的担忧。