Humans, Other Animals and ‘One Health’ in the Early Twenty-First Century

Cassidy, Angela

In keeping with the overall aims of this book, this chapter has also indicated the sorts of animal and animal health concern that have attracted attention from across human medicine, veterinary medicine and the life sciences, and contributed to the development of new relationships between individuals working in these fields under the banner of OH. Both scientific journal articles and images in OH advocacy documents deal overwhelmingly with animals in the abstract: as broad categories such as 'animal' or 'wildlife', and as literal abstractions in the form of silhouettes and logos. This abstraction matches the generic claims made for OH by its advocates, as a universally applicable and beneficial approach to health that has demonstrated its value repeatedly through history. It also recalls to mind how often and how persistently animals continue to be viewed as 'mere blank pages onto which humans wrote meaning'. 102 At the same time, when tracing the origins and practical applications of OH, very specific types of animal, context and problem are shown to be involved.