The commitment of One Health appears at first glance to be an inclusive, intersectional appr
Abstract
The commitment of One Health appears at first glance to be an inclusive, intersectional approach to achieving overall wellbeing for all living beings. And yet, as reflected in the call for submissions for this special edition on the dilemma of animal-source food within One Health, it rarely includes, much less centers, animal species (other than humans) in the discussion surrounding our use of their lives, milks, eggs, babies, or bodies. In this article, we are responding to the call of authors who suggest a Just One Health approach can rhetorically infuse more humility and interconnectedness in positioning humans in and among other animals who also want to live freely in safe, healthy habitats. A multi-species justice ethic (blending human and animal rights into the broader rights of ecosystems) should be incorporated as part of Just One Health’s decision-making criteria.
One Health impact statement
The One Health approach to public health integrates the interests, ethics, and rights of humans, animals, and global ecosystems. However, it rarely includes, much less centers, animal species (other than humans) in discussions. A Just One Health approach does this, including other species as primary stakeholders in decisions that impact them and considers animal well-being not as objects but as subjects. A potential solution is to bring animal perspectives in from the margins to the center of ethical considerations and adjust the language used to describe them. This inclusion is critical to the ongoing development of this approach.
Fostering human animal earthling identities for multi-species food justice
The commitment of One Health appears at first glance to be an inclusive, intersectional approach to achieving overall wellbeing for all living beings. And yet, as reflected in the call for submissions for this special issue on the dilemma of animal-source food within One Health, it rarely includes animals (other than humans) in the discussion surrounding our use of their lives, milk, eggs, babies, or bodies. As communication scholars in critical animal studies, our commentary addresses how we can center animals in One Health appeals (especially related to multi-species food justice), and why we should. A Just One Health orientation (Ferdowsian, 2021) is accomplished not only by acknowledging the interests of other sentient beings but also by addressing human audiences in ways that emphasize our own animality – essentially by assuming a “human animal earthling” identity in our communications (Freeman, 2020).
Fostering a human animal earthling identity is fitting to One Health goals because it equitably incorporates concerns for human rights, animal rights, and environmentalism into self-identity to bolster all of these causes (Freeman, 2020). This more inclusive sense of self invites us to embrace our connections to the whole human race and our status as part of the animal kingdom, and to accept that each of us is one of the trillions of interdependent living beings sharing a home planet. By employing inclusive Just One Health messages, we can foster a human animal earthling identity by acknowledging that we too are animals and by appealing to values common to humans and more-than-human social movements, such as the desire for a healthy life, fair treatment, a sense of unity and community, and the need to be responsible to others (Freeman, 2020). But One Health must apply these values to human and nonhuman animals and strive to overcome inequities based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, class, and species.
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We certainly are not the first to suggest that One Health should evolve to be nonanthropocentric and not simply view the health of other animals instrumentally in terms of what they offer us. We draw upon other scholars who have lobbied for this via an inclusive Just One Health approach. The special section of the Health & Human Rights Journal, for example, featured authors who “explore how major concepts in human rights can and should be applied to other animals for the benefit of human and nonhuman beings” (Ferdowsian, 2021, p. 2), where the rights and welfare of animals who are farmed were often mentioned as part of a broader, multi-species ecological justice context. Furthermore, Ferdowsian’s (2023) recent essay in CABI One Health explained how justice for all beings is a prerequisite for enabling health, often lamenting the intersecting harms caused by the commodification of human and nonhuman animals, such as in the food system. Drawing upon MacDonald’s (2021) work on intensive animal farming and pandemic risks, Ferdowsian (2023, p. 2) noted, “Until recently, more attention has centered on mitigating the risk of emerging infectious diseases in this industrial system of exploitation than on eliminating their root causes through just transitions away from these industries.” Ferdowsian suggested a more holistic, biocentric, justice-based One Health movement:
A One Health view could help to address many of our problems, but only if it places rights and justice – within our species and with other species – at the center of global and local policy, research, and practice. Needed now are international, national, and local social, economic, and legal frameworks that move beyond anthropocentrism, commodification, and simple disease measures to incorporate the rights, health, and wellbeing of humans, other animals, and the rest of the natural world. Human-centered frameworks are insufficient to tackle the interconnected problems that pose an existential threat to human and nonhuman beings (p. 2).
Similarly, Van Patter et al. (2023) explain how anthropocentrism and instrumental thinking can and should be overcome. They lament that “One Health is generally concerned with animal and environmental health not as ends in themselves, but as means to human health” (p. 3) – a colonial worldview that reduces other species to mere “vectors, reservoirs, or determinants of human health” (p. 3). They suggest the “public” in public health should be a multi-species community and One Health embrace an ecofeminist ethic of care and posthumanist discourse that acknowledges animal suffering, agency, and shared vulnerabilities. Drawing upon Srinivasan’s (2022) multi-species justice approach, Van Patter et al. (2023, p. 6) recommend a “reanimalization of the human” that transcends human exceptionalism and envisions ourselves as part of nature. This vision corresponds to our suggestion that a Just One Health discourse should foster a human animal earthling identity among humanity (Freeman, 2020).
In this article, we are responding to the call of these authors and want to suggest how a Just One Health approach can rhetorically infuse more humility and interconnectedness in positioning humans in and among other animals who also want to live freely in safe and healthy habitats. This connectedness begins with strategic terminology, such as using phrases like “all sentient beings” or “all living beings” or having “everyone” mean all animals, and avoiding lumping nonhuman animals into one biotic mass of “the planet” or “nature,” as if separate from humanity. To accurately denote humans’ place in the animal kingdom, use phrases such as “humans and other animals” or “as fellow animals/earthlings, we humans…,” and use “nonhuman animals” to clarify when you need to specify all animal species other than homosapiens. Regarding food discourse, it is respectful to avoid objectifying terms like “livestock” or “dairy cows” and “beef cattle,” or other reductionist industry euphemisms like “poultry” or “seafood” that normalize the instrumental view that certain land or sea animals solely exist to be eaten by humans; alternatively, use the species names instead of labeling them in terms of food objects. We recommend using the term “farmed animals” or “individuals exploited/used on farms” to acknowledge that farming is a captivity system some humans impose on other animals against their will (Freeman and Merskin, 2016) (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. A calf with ringworm stands behind metal bars inside a dark pen on a dairy farm. Sweden, 2012. Jo-Anne McArthur/Djurrattsalliansen/Used by permission. We Animals Media. Available at: https://weanimalsmedia.org/.
OPEN IN VIEWER
Additionally, replacing objectifying terms such as “it” with he/she/they recognize animal sex and individuality. We recognize resistance to anthro
pomorphizing. This mindset has been used for hundreds of years to distance us emotionally from what we do to other than human animals. Medical research has long relied on a system of assigning numbers, not names, to animals who function as experimental objects. That is part of the problem. A truly inclusive view of all beings draws on research that shows that not that long ago, particularly human beings were viewed as property and objects. Research has shown that recognizing human-valued qualities in other species brings us closer to them in terms of developing empathy and understanding (Merskin, 2018; Parkinson, 2020). Hence, empathy for animal sentience decreases the desire to eat animal flesh: “evidence … supports the idea that individual differences in tendencies toward anthropomorphism may be related to increased concern about animals’ welfare and hence lowered meat consumption…. We propose that empathy mediates this link” (Niemyjska et al., 2018, p. 22).
The bottom line? We too are animals made of meat, and for many of the same reasons we take fellow humans off the menu (as we do many other animal species whom we deem too special or too unappealing to eat), we should take all other sentient beings off the menu as well, for their health and for ours. Just as our lives, and the quality of them, matter to us, so their lives matter to them. To the extent we humans can live a healthy life without breeding, farming, or killing anyone, we should – consume plant-based proteins that are nonviolent as well as sustainable to grow/harvest and fit cultural tastes (Freeman, 2014; Kemmerer, 2014). This multi-species justice ethic (blending human and animal rights into the broader rights of ecosystems) should be incorporated as part of Just One Health decision-making criteria. Whereas the call for papers for this special issue on animal-source food mainly considered human ecological, nutritional, cultural, and equity needs, we argue in support of an inclusive Just One Health discourse that includes the health needs and desires of other animals to live freely and not to be bred, farmed, and killed. We acknowledge that certain human societies may need to participate as omnivorous animals in ecosystems where there are no varied plant-based food sources or farming land available for proper nutrition. In these conditions, non-market-based subsistence hunting can be ethically justified1. Or, if possible, nutritious plant foods could be imported as part of food justice aid programs. In contrast to subsistence hunting, animal farming – which holds others captive, without their consent, and breeds and grows them as food – is not a natural or just practice, even when done on a small scale (e.g., it is safe to assume, for example, none of us would want to be farmed and have our babies and our milk taken, even by a “family farmer”) (Freeman, 2014).
To more ethically, efficiently, safely, and sustainably generate healthy food for a growing human population (especially in an era of anthropogenetic climate change, global pandemics, and mass extinction), a Just O
ne Health movement should advocate for organic crop farming of diverse global seed varieties, following agroecological and agroforestry methods (layering food and habitats vertically) (Akhtar, 2012; Kemmerer, 2014; Willett et al., 2019; Van Noordwijk, 2021).
Additionally, One Health debates on concerning issues with humans eating newly developed, cultivated animal meats or processed plant-based meats should also consider the interests of animals other than just humans and our nutritional needs and preferences.
In conclusion, if human superiority and selfishness (especially in a Western colonial context) is often the root cause of ecological destruction, overconsumption, violence, disparities and injustice, disease, suffering, death, and extinction that the One Health movement seeks to overcome, then reinforcing an anthropocentric worldview in One Health discourse only inadvertently perpetuates these problems. In this article, we hoped to offer constructive ways for One Health messages to incorporate a Just One Health perspective in order to live up to its full potential by promoting a more biocentric worldview that fosters a sense that we are not just humans, a species who feels entitled to use all others, but rather “human animal earthlings,” a species that is an integrated part of a biotic community that we aim to keep mutually healthy.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
ETHICS STATEMENT
The authors confirm that this commentary meets any required ethical guidelines.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Both authors contributed equally to the development of this article.
FUNDING STATEMENT
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