My Christmas Iberico ham scare is an omen

FOR a few days, I feared the worst: a Christmas without Iberico ham. In the run-up to the holiday, Spain, my country of birth, announced the first swine fever outbreak in more than 30 years. Within hours, the UK responded with a blanket ban on all Spanish pork meat imports. 

Christmas is not Christmas for a Spanish family without a leg of jamon – think Thanksgiving without turkey. No bueno. Fortunately, I dodged the bullet: The Spain-UK restrictions have been relaxed. But many other countries, from the US to Japan, are maintaining the full prohibition.

My panic was, admittedly, a first-world problem. But it is a timely reminder that we are sleepwalking into the next pandemic. We fear something like another Covid-19 outbreak, but probably the next disease to hit the global economy will infect humans. Instead, it would be a virus that would kill a significant proportion of the domesticated animals we rely for meat, eggs, milk and other products.