Another deadly pandemic seems inevitable — but there is a way to avoid it 

We are not helpless: we need to do big things quickly, though, to halt the disturbance of nature. And I fear that’s not happening, writes John Vidal

The growing danger is that industrial farms are becoming disease factories, incubating and enhancing pathogens like flu, and enabling hyper-virulent pathogens to spread within flocks or cross to humans.

When he bought the pretty little striped field mouse on the internet for $8 to give to his daughter for her sixth birthday, the businessman from São Paulo was told it was free of infection and had been bred by a registered dealer. 

In fact, it had been sourced from the vast sugar cane fields planted in Brazil to grow biofuels to reduce the use of fossil fuels — and which were swarming with rodents after yet another heatwave.