Merck Executive Urges More Investment in Animal Health to Protect Human Health

A senior executive at Merck Animal Health is calling for the United States to spend far more on preventing animal diseases, arguing that protecting livestock and wildlife is one of the most effective ways to safeguard human health and the food supply. In a commentary published by Fortune, Robert Kelly, the company's senior vice president of Global Marketing and Operations, warned that animal diseases can emerge quickly and cause enormous damage if the country is not prepared.

Kelly pointed to the return of the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating maggot that once devastated cattle herds across the South. Sixty years ago, the United States eradicated the parasite through a campaign that saved livestock producers roughly $6 billion annually in inflation-adjusted terms. After brief outbreaks in Texas in the 1970s and the Florida Keys in 2016, federal officials confirmed the first Texas case in decades in June, and the number of confirmed cases has since grown to more than 50. Left unchecked, the outbreak threatens to kill livestock and wildlife, infect pets, and potentially infect people.

Scientists now have more tools than they did during the original eradication campaign, which relied on the sterile insect technique: raising massive numbers of screwworm flies, sterilizing them with radiation, and releasing them so that sterile males mating with wild females slowed reproduction. Today, researchers are using genetic science to strengthen that approach. USDA scientists have developed an all-male strain of the fly, allowing sterile males to be mass-produced in greater numbers, and they are using CRISPR gene-editing technology to engineer sterile flies without relying on damaging radiation.

The outbreak illustrates a broader problem, Kelly argued. Animal diseases — from screwworm to bird flu, which has caused the deaths of more than 140 million birds in recent years — can emerge suddenly and create risks for both human and animal health. Animals are the origin of roughly three-quarters of the infectious diseases that affect people, and animal diseases destroy more than 20% of global livestock production each year. Yet while humans invest billions annually to protect themselves from disease, less than 1% of global health spending goes toward animal health, making it one of the most significant blind spots in the public health system.

Kelly said the country does not need to build entirely new tools. Innovations developed for human medicine can be adapted for animals if there is proactive investment. Messenger RNA technology, the basis for the first COVID vaccines, is being used in related techniques to inoculate poultry against bird flu and cattle against foot-and-mouth disease. Preventing a major U.S. outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which spreads rapidly among livestock and can force mass culling, movement restrictions, and trade disruptions, could avert hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses, according to some estimates.

Wearable devices offer another example. AI-powered smart collars and ear tags allow farmers to monitor changes in livestock behavior that may reveal illness before obvious symptoms appear, giving them more time to isolate and treat sick animals. One cattle producer quoted in the New York Times estimated that using smart collars had saved him nearly $1 million in cattle health costs.

Better vaccines can keep outbreaks from destroying herds and flocks, protect food production, and reduce opportunities for pathogens to spread to people, Kelly wrote. Better monitoring tools can help farmers identify threats earlier and avoid expensive eradication campaigns. The United States has spent decades developing ways to detect, prevent, and treat human diseases, but has invested far less in preventing animal diseases despite the risks they pose to human health and food security. By investing intentionally in animal health and adapting more tools already developed for human medicine, the country can identify threats sooner, contain outbreaks faster, and reduce the damage they cause, while ensuring that historic problems like screwworm remain defeated, he argued.

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Connor Quincy

Technology Reporter

Connor Quincy covers public affairs, politics, business, culture and daily news for Core Memo. The role focuses on verification, context, and clear explanations for readers.

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