Journal of Animal Research and Nutrition

Abstract

Outbreaks of infectious diseases in honey bees, fish, amphibians, bats and birds in the past two decades have coincided with the increasing use of systemic insecticides, notably the neonicotinoids and fipronil. A link between insecticides and such diseases is hypothesised. Firstly, the disease outbreaks started in countries and regions where systemic insecticides were used for the first time, and later they spread to other countries. The expanding international wildlife trade, combined with a lack of surveillance for key animal diseases in most countries, represents a potential pathway for transboundary disease movement. While the international wildlife trade represents over the world involving exchange of billions of individual animals, animal products, and plants as traditional medicines, meat from wild animals, trophies, live exotic pets, commercial products and food, surveillance and reporting of OIE-Listed diseases in wildlife are often opportunistic. Global factors, such as climate change, international trade and introductions of exotic species are often elicited as contributors to the unprecedented rate of disease emergence, but few studies have partitioned these factors for global pandemics.