With the Coronavirus in the news, now seems to be a good time to talk about disease defense and prevention. Coronaviruses are a family of zoonotic viruses (meaning transmitted between animals and humans) that can cause respiratory illness in humans. Experts believe the emerging worldwide outbreak may have begun when the virus was transmitted to humans by a pangolin, an animal resembling the armadillo. Of course, coronaviruses are not the only zoonotic diseases, and pangolins are not the only animals that can transmit diseases to people. Over the course of history, humans have contracted diseases from birds, pigs, bats and many other animals.
And diseases that afflict livestock can be economically devastating. Each year, the cost of foreign pests and diseases in the U.S. is estimated to reach into the tens of billions of dollars. Even a single disease can devastate an industry.