Guest editorial

Zoos and bios conjoined: Such is the posthuman ethos, which invokes the biological/ecological community of “companion species” that compose our lifeworld, without which we cannot exist. The COVID-19 viral presence, though invasive in our world, changes our self-perception: no longer a single macro-organism, we are in fact an “assemblage” of microorganisms, upon which life depends absolutely (Baumlin, 2020, p. 3). The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic reached the United Kingdom in late January 2020, thereby ensuring that the final stages of this special issue came together at an extraordinary time: a time that could very well signal the end of the world as we knew it. By July 2020, over ten million coronavirus cases had been recorded globally, and the number of related human deaths now exceeds half a million. As we write this editorial, we are painfully aware of the connections between industrial animal agriculture and the emergence of COVID-19. Animal abuse and environmental issues are linked and give rise to major public health issues – live animal trade, eating animals and industrialised agriculture have combined to generate zoonoses, in addition to the usual suspects for environmental pollution (WHO, 2010). There have long been warnings about zoonoses both before and after previous strains of flu viruses, such as SARS and Avian Flu. As humanity has become a predominantly urban species, human settlement, work, transport and a range of social practices make the lives of vulnerable creatures more so, encroaching on and eliminating habitats, and driving wild animals into closer proximity with humans. It remains to be seen whether this pandemic will have any impact on the demand for meat (“wild” or farmed), dairy and other animal-based products. The experiences of SARs, MERs and EBOV (Ebola) were not instructive in this regard. However, predictably, we are already seeing familiar arguments for “business as usual” gain in momentum and visibility, just as the next zoonotic pandemic “waits in the wings” (Lebedev, 2020).