Swine Flu
By Monica @ 6:55 PM   
I don't know if you've noticed, but there's been surprisingly little detail on this swine flu. Additionally, local reports are indicating that the death toll from this flu is higher than most media sources are reporting.
We are now learning that this "swine" flu virus is a mixture of four viruses: 1 human, avian, and 2 swine influenza viruses. This amount of recombination has been historically unusual. Scientists claim they have no idea how this happened, yet the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm and Animal Production has already warned of emerging forms of avian-swine-human influenza viruses here in the U.S. due to the way we keep animals. Duh! This outbreak could almost as easily have happened in the United States.
What has not been reported in the mainstream media until now, but which has been known in Mexico for weeks, is that it is believed that this flu is linked to a US-owned Smithfields CAFO pork operation in Mexico. The original reporting on this, from what I can see, was in Grist who picked up on a disease tracking blog called Biosurveillance. The only report I have seen in the mainstream media is, as of the time of this writing, from the Times. I include a large section here because I think it is important. (my emphasis in italics added)
The first known case of swine flu emerged a fortnight earlier than previously thought in a village where residents have long complained about the smell and flies from a nearby pig farm, it emerged last night. ...The boy’s hometown, La Gloria, is also close to a pig farm that raises almost 1 million animals a year. The facility, Granjas Carroll de Mexico, is partly owned by Smithfield Foods, a Virginia-based US company and the world’s largest producer and processor of pork products. Residents of La Gloria have long complained about the clouds of flies that are drawn the so-called “manure lagoons” created by such mega-farms, known in the agriculture business as Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). It is now known that there was a widespread outbreak of a powerful respiratory disease in the La Gloria area earlier this month, with some of the town’s residents falling ill in February. Health workers soon intervened, sealing off the town and spraying chemicals to kill the flies that were reportedly swarming through people’s homes. A spokeswoman for Smithfield, Keira Ullrich, said that the company had found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in its swine herd or its employees working at its joint ventures anywhere in Mexico. Meanwhile, Mexico’s National Organisation of Pig Production and Producers released its own statement, saying: “We deny completely that the influenza virus affecting Mexico originated in pigs because it has been scientifically demonstrated that this is not possible.” According reports gathered on the website of James Wilson, a founding member of the Biosurveillance Indication and Warning Analysis Community (BIWAC), about 60 per cent of La Gloria’s 3,000-strong population have sought medical assistance since February. “Residents claimed that three pediatric cases, all under two years of age, died from the outbreak,” wrote Mr Wilson. “However, officials stated that there was no direct link between the pediatric deaths and the outbreak; they said the three fatal cases were isolated and not related to each other.” The case of the four-year-old boy was announced yesterday by Mexico’s Health Minister, Jose Angel Cordova, at a press conference that was briefly interrupted by an earthquake. “We are at the most critical moment of the epidemic. The number of cases will keep rising so we have to reinforce preventive measures,” he said, adding that in addition to the 149 deaths another 2,000 had been hospitalised with “grave pneumonia”, although at least half of that number had since made a full recovery. Mr Cordova went on to say that there have been no new cases detected in La Gloria but epidemiologists want to take a closer look at pigs in Mexico as a potential source of the outbreak.
Food Renegade reports: Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) for pigs are about as grotesque as they can come. Pigs are crammed into giant buildings, kept in stalls so small they can’t even turn around. The pollution from their waste is so noxious that you must wear a gas mask to enter the building. And, of course, the pig’s immune systems are so weakened that you must don a “clean suit” just to walk within 100 feet of them. Lest you think that's an exaggeration, I recommend this article if you are currently ignorant about what it takes to produce cheap food, particularly pork. It's a highly recommended read about the history of CAFO pork operations, particularly the company in question, Smithfields. I will warn you, it is not for the faint-hearted. Just ignore the free market hullabaloo. These operations are not the product of a free market. Anything but. They are the product of socialism. They started growing in the 1960s when the USDA subsidy program started producing ultra-cheap corn. And if you read between the lines, they were allowed to achieve massive levels of growth by putting small farmers out of business by their owners dictating slaughterhouse contracts. And if you are a small farmer you simply can't build a USDA inspection facility cheaply, so you are at the mercy of those who own them.
Honestly, this whole story angers me beyond belief. We don't need more regulations, and this swine flu epidemic is just what will justify more food safety regulations and a massive new government agency created by HR 875, more controls over our food. Yes, this pork factory may be responsible for this. But can you imagine a town in the United States where 60% of the population experiences respiratory distress and some sort of legal action isn't pursued? There have been plenty of lawsuits already over CAFOs in the United States. What appears clear in this article is that the local authorities didn't care. As in many countries that are less free (like China), corruption of the local officials is rampant.
Here is what we need to do. We need to abolish grain subsidies and the EQIP program that help CAFOs to be profitable. We need to abolish USDA meat inspection requirements dating back to Teddy Roosevelt that put small farmers out of business. On-farm, hygienic slaughter is not an issue. We need to put to rest programs like NAIS that are exorbitantly costly to the small farmer and have nothing to do with food safety. Foreign countries need accountable local governments free of corruption. And if it can be proved that Smithfields helped to create this global pandemic, which will likely kill thousands if not more, they should be sued out the ying yang. We already know that CAFOs, whether beef or pork, have created antibiotic and acid- resistant strains of E. coli and MRSA. Now possibly this new swine flu. None of these are just some minor nuisance, they are deadly. And these developments are completely predictable to anyone having taken Evolution 101. The animals are packed in at way too high a density (seriously, 50,000 hogs per square mile?) to ever regulate these factories into cleanliness.
Frankly -- and unfortunately -- I'm even skeptical that lawsuits will help them to clean up their act: Smithfield is not just a virtuosic polluter; it is also a theatrical one. Its lagoons are historically prone to failure. In North Carolina alone they have spilled, in a span of four years, 2 million gallons of shit into the Cape Fear River, 1.5 million gallons into its Persimmon Branch, one million gallons into the Trent River and 200,000 gallons into Turkey Creek. In Virginia, Smithfield was fined $12.6 million in 1997 for 6,900 violations of the Clean Water Act -- the third-largest civil penalty ever levied under the act by the EPA. It amounted to .035 percent of Smithfield's annual sales. So most importantly, we all need to search out and face the reality of where our food comes from and adjust our purchases accordingly. People who are having their water supplies polluted by this waste are having their rights violated, and it doesn't appear that EPA regulations or lawsuits are really working to do anything about it. (It might help on a legal level if waterways were owned, which is where most of the problems have occurred.) Most Americans are far too ignorant of these matters.
Labels: Pandemics, Swine Flu
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1 Comments:
Here in Texas the health department is trying to force raw milk consumers to go to directly to the farm to buy their raw milk. How ridiculous can you get? It's raw milk from family farms that should be sold direct to consumers in farmers markets and CAFO meat and dairy that should be sold only at the farm so consumers can see the source of what they're buying!
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