Hardwire One Health into EU law before ‘Disease X' strikes
That warning dominated the 'Preventing Disease X' conference in Brussels on 3 July, where experts called for EU policy to match the scale of the risk.
Their message was clear: if One Health is to be more than a buzzword, it must be hardwired into legislation, now, before Disease X strikes.
Most pandemics, including COVID-19, began with zoonotic pathogens, and the next one, dubbed Disease X, likely will too. Preventing it starts with animal health.
From concept to capability
Dr. Emmanuelle Soubeyran, Director-General of the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), delivered a blunt assessment: 'One Health is not only a concept, but it is becoming a binding principle of global health programmes. But principles are not enough, and they need to be translated into actions, especially when the first signs of disease emerge. That's why veterinary services must be at the frontlines of pandemic prevention.'
She called the COVID-19 pandemic 'a governance stress test that exposed painful gaps in surveillance in the veterinary system and in public health systems and in multi-sectoral coordination.' Those gaps, she warned, still exist.
The problem isn't just technical. It's political.
Soubeyran said: 'We need to raise the profile of animal health and convince both political and private decision-makers that investment in animal health is very important. Animal health is not only an issue of animal health. It has an impact on trade, food security and public health and antimicrobial resistance and also impacts on biodiversity and environmental impact.'
Yet the conversation too often stops at ministries of health. 'Most of the time I speak about One Health in front of ministers of health, but not in front of ministers of agriculture or ministers of economy,' she said. 'I should speak with Ministers of Agriculture, Ministers of Economy, and Ministers of Finance as well.'
Without that broader engagement, she warned, the One Health agenda risks narrowing into 'One Human Health.'
Governance meets the laboratory
Jean-Baptiste Perrin of the European Commission's DG Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) acknowledged the governance gap, and outlined efforts to fix it. 'We have the preparedness strategy published in March, but additional strategies are coming,' he said.
Chief among them is a new EU stockpiling strategy, due on 8 July. While focused on medical countermeasures (MCMs), it has clear implications for zoonotic outbreaks.
'One is the stockpiling strategy, so explaining how the European stockpile can articulate with national, sometimes regional, or local stockpile for meaningful countermeasures,' Perrin explained.
Also in the pipeline is a strategy for novel countermeasures (NCMs), mapping the full value chain from innovation to deployment.
'One very important point in this strategy … [is] the governance and the coordination, the chain of command that needs to be clear in time of crisis.'
HERA is also working on threat-specific technical roadmaps. 'We're working on threat-specific roadmaps tailored to each pathogen and its most effective countermeasures.'
To support this, HERA is building links between human and veterinary institutes, a concrete expression of the One Health vision.
However, Perrin stressed that none of this will work unless member states collaborate. 'It's a complex task, especially given the differing competencies of Member States.'
Legislative levers remain limited
Asked whether the Critical Medicines Act (CMA) could expand HERA's remit to cover veterinary tools, Perrin acknowledged structural limits. 'There is a specific difficulty at European level to properly and fully implement the One Health approach … we do not have the same competency in public health and animal health. That said, it's worth discussing, and I think we need to keep the discussion open and reflect further on the mandate. But as of today we need to concentrate on human health,' he said.
The price of neglect
If money was missing from the conversation, Professor Jonathan Rushton supplied the spreadsheet.
'Economics is not just for advocacy,' the agricultural economist from the University of Edinburgh warned. 'Economics can help with the drivers of human behaviour … and it can support the assessment of the incentives about how we get people involved in vaccination campaigns.'
Rushton noted that animal health contributes to far more than farm productivity. 'We're providing animals that are healthy; they provide products that are safe to eat, in quantity, that actually provides important micronutrients and proteins … it's also an economic activity.'
Yet global spending still fails to reflect this importance. In a livestock sector worth an estimated $3.3 trillion annually, animal health spending barely reaches 2 percent of that. 'In 2021, $10 trillion was spent on human health. $70 billion was spent on animal health. It's minuscule.'
Prevention is not a luxury
Roxane Feller, Secretary-General of Animal Health Europe, closed the meeting by reinforcing what others had said throughout the day: investment in animal health is strategic. 'Animal health is not a cost, it's an investment.'
Political momentum is growing, she noted, citing a new Parliament report on livestock sustainability, and recent Council debates on vaccination and disease control. But the One Health gap remains.
'The missing elephant in the room is more on One Health. We still believe that there is a lack of understanding of this intrinsic correlation between human, animal and environmental health.'
That disconnect is felt most acutely on the ground.
Emily, a young dairy farmer from South Devon, shared the emotional and financial toll of losing over 130 cows to bovine tuberculosis (TB), wiping out decades of selective breeding and destabilising her entire business and family.
'TB's just not a disease when you're losing cows,' she said. 'It absolutely ruins your life.' Her story underscored what many experts argued throughout the day: that prevention must start with engagement, support, and investment, well before crisis hits.
From silos to systems
What emerged from the conference was not a lack of awareness, but a shared frustration at the fragmentation of the current system.
Governance remains weak, investment lags, and political engagement is too narrow. Surveillance, veterinary services, and pandemic response must be connected through legislation, budgets, and cross-sector cooperation.
As Soubeyran concluded, 'We cannot prevent every outbreak … but with sustained political will, coordinated investment, cross-sectoral action, we can stop the next pandemic, or at least we can get prepared to be more efficient.'
Europe must act before Disease X makes preparation irrelevant.
[Edited By Brian Maguire | Euractiv's Advocacy Lab ]
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