Livestock – More Dangerous Than Mountain Lions, Poisonous Snakes, or Stinging Insects

Cattle and horses account for 90% of all animal-related deaths in the United States, and that number hasn’t changed since the last time researchers collected this data in 2007. Jared Forrester, M.D., the lead investigator for the study covering fatalities from venomous and nonvenomous animals from 2008-2015 says that learning more about deaths due to animals in farm environments would help target practices that would prevent these deaths. The study, published in Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, found that there were 1,610 animal-related deaths, and 57% of those were the result of encounters with cattle, horses, dogs, pigs, raccoons and other mammals. Forrester says, “Importantly, most deaths are not actually due to wild animals, like mountain lions, wolves, bears, sharks, etc., but are a result of deadly encounters with farm animals, anaphylaxis from bees, wasps, or hornet stings, and dog attacks.”That means that, while you ought to know what to do if you encounter a potentially dangerous animal in the wild, the actual risk of death is quite low. What you really need to know is how to protect yourself from bees and wasps and your own livestock. Each year there are 220,000 visits to the emergency room and about 60 deaths as a result of insect stings. Emergency visits and deaths due to animals beat that by a wide margin: over 1 million ER visits, and 201 deaths annually with about $2 billion in healthcare spending added on.