The Elephant in the Room by Liz Kalaugher review – how we make animals sick

Before entering Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden, visitors must walk over disinfecting mats to rid their shoes of bacteria or other pathogens. Next to the mats is a sign whose admonition seems at once both practical and religious: "Cleanse your soles." Whenever I visit, as I often do, this sign always makes me smile: this ritualised cleaning is an important measure to prevent outbreaks of disease among the garden's 730 species, but it also seems to be some kind of spiritual act.

Anyone tempted to jump that mat should read Liz Kalaugher's new book, a wide-ranging, thorough and persuasive investigation of the ways in which we have made non-human animals sick. Her book reads as a kind of shadow history of human endeavour and innovation, tracing the calamitous price that trade, exchange and intensive farming have exacted on everything from frogs to ferrets. It's a measured and detailed account, but below the calm surface you can hear an anguished cry imploring us to open our eyes and see how our own health is intertwined with that of other species.



We are now keenly aware of zoonotic diseases – those that jump from wildlife to humans, such as HIV and Covid. But we appreciate less how our own actions have caused or facilitated the spread of disease in the other direction, whether through migration, habitat destruction, domestication or intensive farming. In the 1980s, Jared Diamond coined the term "evil quartet" to denote the main causes of species extinction: habitat destruction, introduced species, overkill and secondary.

.. Edward Posnett.