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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought humanity’s strained relationship with nature into sharp focus, with calls for cessation of wild meat trade and consumption, to protect public health and biodiversity.1,2 However, the importance of wild meat for human nutrition, and its tele-couplings to other food production systems, mean that the complete removal of wild meat from diets and markets would represent a shock to global food systems.3, 4, 5, 6 The negative consequences of this shock deserve consideration in policy responses to COVID-19. We demonstrate that the sudden policy-induced loss of wild meat from food systems could have negative consequences for people and nature. Loss of wild meat from diets could lead to food insecurity, due to reduced protein and nutrition, and/or drive land-use change to replace lost nutrients with animal agriculture, which could increase biodiversity loss and emerging infectious disease risk. We estimate the magnitude of these consequences for 83 countries, and qualitatively explore how prohibitions might play out in 10 case study places. Results indicate that risks are greatest for food-insecure developing nations, where feasible, sustainable, and socially desirable wild meat alternatives are limited. Some developed nations would also face shocks, and while high-capacity food systems could more easily adapt, certain places and people would be disproportionately impacted. We urge decision-makers to consider potential unintended consequences of policy-induced shocks amidst COVID-19; and take holistic approach to wildlife trade interventions, which acknowledge the interconnectivity of global food systems and nature, and include safeguards for vulnerable people.
Highlights
If all wild meat is replaced by animal agriculture, this could lead to a worst-case land-use change scenario, with subsequent impacts on biodiversity loss and the risk of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs)
By drawing together available global datasets on nutrient supply and land demand for biodiversity[4,7,8,9,10,11] we provide a rudimentary estimate of the animal protein that would be lost from diets if all wild meat consumption ceased, and the land required to replace this protein with livestock production, for 83 countries
We identified 15 countries at high risk of food insecurity, which rely on wild meat for more than 5% of total animal protein, and are currently ranked in the bottom 50% of the global food security index (Figure 1; Table S1)
Summary
Conceptual framework The potential negative consequences of a policy-induced loss of wild meat from food systems exist on a spectrum between two ‘worst-case scenarios’ (Figure 2). A worst-case scenario for food insecurity is one in which all wild meat is suddenly lost from food systems, in the absence of feasible, socially desirable alternatives, meaning that the protein is not replaced (Figure 2). If all wild meat is replaced by animal agriculture, this could lead to a worst-case land-use change scenario, with e1 Current Biology 31, 1788–1797.e1–e3, April 26, 2021. A lack of enforcement or social acceptance of policies to restrict wild meat supply could result in a business as usual (BAU) scenario, where prohibitions have little effect. Prohibitions can lead to other perverse consequences, such as proliferation of informal and illicit trade networks, which undermines evidence-based surveillance and disease mitigation, and may increase prices and fuel further corruption and inequity in places where enforcement capacity is weak.[19,82] In reality, consequences would likely fall somewhere in between these three extremes (Figure 2), moderated by levels of compliance and modes of adaptation (e.g., adoption of less-damaging alternatives such as wild-caught fisheries, aquaculture, small-mammal farming, sustainable wildlife hunting or cheap food imports), which in turn depend on system-specific socio-ecological factors, such as culture and biomes.[14,19,83]
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