Lipkin spoke about a research trip to Saudi Arabia to study infectious diseases. Middle East Respiratory SyndromeIt is a SARS-like virus that was first identified in 2012 and is also known as MERS.
MERS was thought to be transmitted by camels, but no one understood how people in a big city like Riyadh could have contracted the disease when there were no camels in the area.
Lipkin visited two slaughterhouses, where, as per tradition, each slaughters a camel, then a cow, then a sheep, as the sun sets. At one slaughterhouse, butchers use high-pressure hoses to clean the animals’ meat before shrink-wrapping it for sale, but at the other, this step was not followed.
Lipkin found extremely high levels of viral material in beef and lamb where hoses were not used, but no viral material where hoses were used.
Lipkin said he remains concerned about the overuse of antibiotics in the livestock industry, increasing the risk that these essential medicines won’t work when people need them.
Cheap genetic testing now makes it possible to rapidly test wild and farmed animals for pathogens that could pose a risk to humans, he said. People who work closely with animals can also have their blood tested to see if they have antibodies that would indicate they’ve previously been infected with an animal-borne virus.