It’s not farfetched that a vegetarian diet could have prevented this deadly disease.

The bird flu that is spreading across the globe is just one more example of a situation in which a virus has leaped from animals to people.

In a vegetarian world, humans would likely not be threatened by bird flu. Viruses that would dissipate in nature spread quickly in crowded factory farms, where chickens are intensively reared for their flesh. These viruses eventually mutate and are spread to humans who work in filthy farming sheds … and then to the general population.

Chickens in factory farms lead miserable lives and suffer terrifying deaths. They are crammed by the tens of thousands into sheds that stink of ammonia from the accumulated waste in which they are forced to lie and stand for their entire lives. They are barely given room to move (each bird lives on approximately the amount of space equivalent to a standard sheet of paper); they never see the light of day or enjoy anything a chicken would naturally enjoy. Is bird flu any surprise in these horrid conditions?

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) that, like bird flu, caused worldwide panic, evolved in southern China, where 80 million people share living space with the ducks, chickens, pigs, shrimp and carp they eat. Chicken waste is fed to pigs. Pig waste is dumped into ponds in which shrimp and fish are raised for food. All farmed animals are crowded into small spaces where viruses thrive. One scientist called this area “a complete soup of chemicals and viruses”. Another explained: “A virus gets into a duck, it jumps to the pig. It mutates, the pig excretes it and humans can become infected”.

Chinese scientists working with a team at the University of Chicago studied 11 seemingly independent cases of SARS in an area where they found “culinary habits involving exotic animals”. It is now accepted that diseases such as bird flu, SARS and mad cow evolve as a result of the continued abuse of animals.

Intensively confining animals creates filth that allows diseases to spread quickly. Unnatural farming practices and eating animal flesh have killed millions of people. In addition to bird flu and SARS, animals killed for consumption are also likely to carry listeria, salmonella, leukosis (chicken cancer), campylobacter and E. coli bacteria, which all thrive in factory farms.

Yet bird flu, SARS and mad cow disease do not even come close to delivering the toll of deaths and illness from heart disease, cancer, strokes, high blood pressure and other ailments caused by meat-eating.

According to Dr. T. Colin Campbell, nutritional researcher at Cornell University and director of the largest epidemiological study in history, “The vast majority of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented ... simply by adopting a plant-based diet”.

The cost to animals is beyond measure. Crammed together in tiny spaces, living in their own waste, never breathing fresh air or feeling the sunshine on their backs, they never know a moment’s joy or contentment.

The solution is to stop treating animals as though they have no feelings or needs. The farmed-animal industry will change only when we force it to by refusing to buy its products. Going vegan will save animals’ lives – and it could save yours too.