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Council on Foreign Relations

This, in turn, has influenced efforts to advance a “One Health” approach, which brings together human, animal, and environmental health.

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“… A third and related challenge is the limited scope of activities deemed legitimate for the global governance of emerging zoonotic diseases to undertake. These emphasize secondary prevention through disease surveillance and selected measures for preparedness and response, such as diagnostics, vaccines, treatments, clinical care, and biosafety protocols. However, activities to advance primary prevention, including the need to adopt binding regulation of the private sector, is often deemed beyond the scope of scientific and technical cooperation. As researcher John Mackenzie and his colleagues argue, “there is little interest in any form of ‘global governance’: [One Health] is a concept or approach not an association or society.” Instead, the authors support “[identifying] a body that can lead relationship development between major disciplines and foster a true transdisciplinary approach, develop global guidelines and strategies, and ensure sustainable funding is needed, probably in an advisory capacity.” This approach suggests a larger resistance to granting regulatory authority over human activities that directly or indirectly contribute to increased risks of spillover events, including the role of powerful private sector interests such as the food, transport, forestry, and energy industries. The result is a continued focus on identifying and responding to zoonotic disease events but not engaging in primary prevention to stop them happening in the first place. …”

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The Global Governance of Emerging Zoonotic Diseases (cfr.org)