Contemporary pathogens and the capitalist world food system
A. Haroon Akram‐Lodhi
Abstract
Zoonotic diseases like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, are human bacterial and viral infections that originate in animals and which cross the species barrier. Over the course of the twenty-first century, the process of viruses transiting across the species barrier appears to have accelerated as a succession of new diseases has emerged. This paper argues that the forces accelerating the emergence of zoonotics lie in the structural characteristics of the capitalist world food system, which is concerned with the production of commodities whose value can be realised through market sales that generate profits for the producer of the commodities. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown the capitalist world food system onto the precipice of a crisis, if crisis is understood as an interruption in the process of capital accumulation, because the terms and conditions by which the capitalist world food system operates serve to simultaneously multiply and deepen threats to global health. In other words, there is a co-morbidity between COVID-19 and the capitalist world food system.