Follow the herd

Another symptom of swine flu: instant amnesia 23

swine on a bedPhoto illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist

Swine flu: how very two weeks ago.

Sure, H1N1 transmission is “still on the upswing” in the United States, and the World Health Organization warned that as much of a third of the globe’s population could eventually catch it, Reuters reported last week.

But the disease is turning out to be little more virulent than the common flu. It resists older anti-viral treatments, but fortunately, new ones like Tamiflu have its number. For now, anyway. “We all pray this remains sensitive to antivirals,” CDC chief virologist Rubin Donis recently told Science—not exactly inspiring confidence.

Thus sensationalist media spotlight on swine flu is beginning to fade. Out of sight, out of mind. In our culture of instant amnesia, the 2009 swine flu outbreak appears to be skulking into the shadows to join such forgotten one-time burning media fixations as the Teri Schiavo and Elian Gonzalez  episodes.

Worrying about future outbreaks, it seems, is for professionals. “Vast amounts of time and resources are being invested in planning for the next influenza pandemic,” declares an article published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. If a truly virulent strain breaks out, we’ll be glad that public-health professionals are taking the threat seriously.

Yet even as the public-health system “plans for the next pandemic,” we as a public have some hard questions to ponder. So-called “triple-reassortant swine influenza viruses”—containing genetic material from human, swine, and avian genetic strains—first appeared in 1998, and have been evolving rapidly since. Until very recently, they haven’t been very efficient at infecting humans— and even worse at jumping from human to human. All of that changed this spring in Mexico.

While public health professionals prepare for the next outbreak—no doubt praying, like the CDC’s Donis, that the antivirals being stockpiled remain effective—what are we doing as a society to make a pandemic less likely? That question leads to the the place where many scientists believe the new H1N1 strain originated: the confined-animal feedlot operation, or CAFO.

A couple of weeks ago, I caused a mini-sensation by pointing out that U.S. pork behemoth Smithfield Foods runs massive hog-rearing operations near the village in Mexico where the swine flu evidently reared up; and that local residents believed the mysterious, virulent flu-like outbreak was tied to flies emanating from the vast cesspools that abut the hog factories (For an excellent on-the-ground report from Mexico, see Steve Fainaru’s piece from Sunday’s Washington Post). Critics rebuked me, correctly charging that there’s no proof linking the Smithfield confinements to the disease—and added that no visible signs of sickness have been reported within Smithfield’s Mexican or U.S. herd. (It’s important to note, however, that hogs can carry flu viruses without falling ill—and the only actual testing being done on Smithfield’s Mexico hogs is controlled by the company itself; and that U.S. regulators have no system in place for testing domestic hogs).

We may never know precisely where this version of H1N1 originated—the “pig zero” in whose body the strain incubated.

But we do know that raising animals by the thousands in tight quarters is a U.S. invention—one that characterizes close to 100 percent of hog, poultry, and cow fattening. It’s a model that’s spreading rapidly across the globe, pushed aggressively by U.S.-based multinational meat giants like Smithfield, Cargill, and Tyson. A growing number of scientists is pointing to the factory-style farms as ideal sites for flu bugs and other pathogens to mutate rapidly and spread to human populations via workers.

Read the veterinary literature on swine flu and you get a strong sense of what might be called vaccination treadmill: the hog industry is literally scrambling to generate new vaccines for the rapidly evolving flu strains that sweep through CAFOs. Writing in the Journal of Infectious Diseases [PDF] in 2008, Eileen Thacker and Bruce Janke of Iowa State University paint a stark picture: “A number of genetically diverse viruses are circulating in swine herds throughout the world and are a major cause of concern to the swine industry,” they write. “Influenza virus infections in swine and poultry are potential sources of viruses for the next pandemic among humans.”

They describe a kind of fast-changing viral alphabet soup flowing through hog confinements:

An increased rate of genetic change has occurred among both H1 and H3 subtypes [since 1998], with multiple genetically and antigenically diverse viruses of both major subtypes (H1 and H3) circulating in swine herds. Recently, there have been reports of H3N1 viruses circulating in Asia and the United States. Even more recently, an H1N1 virus composed of only human influenza virus genes has entered the US swine population. In addition to the influenza viruses described above, which are isolated fairly commonly from US swine herds, H3 and H1N1 avian influenza virus subtypes have been isolated from pigs in Canada, and transmission of human and swine influenza viruses between the two species has been well documented.

The industry tries to stay on top of this highly dynamic situation by vaccinating sows to “to protect young pigs through maternally derived antibodies,” the authors note. But “influenza viruses continue to circulate in pigs after the decay of maternal antibodies, providing a continuing source of virus on a herd basis.” As the good veterinary scientists they are, the authors end on a bland note: “Control of influenza virus infection in poultry and swine is critical to the reduction of potential cross-species adaptation and spread of influenza viruses, which will minimize the risk of animals being the source of the next pandemic.”

Writing in Newsweek, Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, took a more blunt approach. Factory-scale animal farming, she writes,  creates “the ecology that, in the cases of pigs and chickens, is breeding influenza. It is an ecology that promotes viral evolution. And if we don’t do something about it, this ecology will one day spawn a severe pandemic that will dwarf that of 1918.”

“Doing something about it,” though, is quite a trick. Industrial meat is a vast industry with billions of dollar of investments across the globe. Garrett is arguing that its signature practice of stuffing the same species together by the thousand is creating a vast public-health menace. Surely, the industry can’t be expected to roll up and go away—and is predictably enough scrambling to distance itself from the flu pandemic.

For me, the key now is to resist instant amnesia as the current pandemic fades out of the news cycle—to keep the flu story alive by continuing to investigate the industry’s practices and the government’s feeble oversight efforts.

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.

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  1. Former Ag Teacher Posted 12:13 pm
    11 May 2009

    Tom's ego just won't let him admit that he over reacted and did a poor job of writing.Want to read an article about the current H1N1 outbreak from a real journaist who finds unbiased sources?  Try this link.  Flu? Don't blame the pig  H1N1, the so-called swine flu, probably came together thanks to a few unwitting human jet-setters, scientists say http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-swine-pigs9-2009may09,0,4490014.story?page=1"This is a human virus," Robert Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., and a preeminent expert on influenza.

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  2. Tom Laskawy's avatar

    Tom Laskawy Posted 12:36 pm
    11 May 2009

    Yes, as the SAME article clearly states:"Scientists see two possible ways in which people may have helped
    assemble the building blocks of the new flu. In the first, a pig
    transmitted one virus to a person. That person crossed an ocean and
    gave it to a pig that was already infected with another one. The pig
    became a "mixing vessel" in which the two strains re- assorted to form
    the new virus.

    Alternatively, a person who'd had contact with pigs on two continents
    picked up a virus in each place. That person, not a pig, was a mixing
    vessel."But wait, that sort of undercuts your point, Former Ag Teacher...   Scenario 1: Pig -> Human -> Pig -> Human OR Scenario 2) Human -> Pig -> Human -> Pig... Any way you slice it, pigs are a crucial part of this. But, hey, whatever! Let's stuff thousands of animals in close quarters and keep rolling the dice. I mean, it's just people dying. The pigs are fine.

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  3. gristle Posted 1:15 pm
    11 May 2009

     I was thinking just last night that we keep ignoring all the alarms we've been getting about the harm we're heading for at breakneck speed throwing all things off balance with tax payer supported factoried animals. We will simply have to go through the hell of consequences. At least those who survive it anyway.Regardless of how conscientious some of us our in our choices and with our knowledge we'll never be able to overcome the greed of the big companies or of those who buy from them. People want a deal despite the costs.At least there will be records left behind showing that not all of us were stupid or utterly resistant. ^^^^ I can understand being dense and slow to overcome the propaganda of big business but to actively choose ignorance?

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  4. Clifford Wells's avatar

    Clifford Wells Posted 3:02 pm
    11 May 2009

    Stockyards for cattle and hogs have been around for a century, but apparently it is fashionable to blame them for all our society's ills now ... without a shed of proof other than it "could" happen.  There is no doubt that the CAFO is a stinky, smelling, nasty operation.  There is no doubt that pigs, birds, monkeys, and all kinds of animals can breed influenza-like viruses.  But I don't see constructive ideas how to fix the problem, except to eliminate the CAFO, the stockyards, and ... well all meat in general I guess.  It's a dream come true for the vegans!But it's not just those whacky vegans and those crazy foodies, there is a certain element of society that thrives on creating a panic.  These people have a slightly different "bad attitude" and simply want to make everyone go home and stay in their rooms.  Of course, you have people like Tom Phillpott that are a combination of the two, as evidenced by his shrill tone and need for self-validation (this isn't about fixing a problem, it's about proving he himself is right!).The situation was getting so bad that the CDC and government tamped down all the hysteria and mayhem caused by the media and a few shrill food-whackos and scare mongers.  Schools were allowed to reopen.  The UIL sports tournaments were allowed to proceeed.  The media attention "lost some of bloom off the rose."  Now this really makes Alpha-types like Tom real mad, smoking mad.  How dare they pull the plug on all the interest in my story about those horrible CAFOs and stickyards and slaughterhouses?  Well nice try, Upton Sinclair wrote about it back in 1906 in his seminal book, 'The Jungle.'  The injustice, the human slavery, the misery, and yes even the strange sicknesses last right up to this day. 

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  5. gristle Posted 4:51 pm
    11 May 2009

    "Ad hominem argument is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem abusive, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it."

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  6. Clifford Wells's avatar

    Clifford Wells Posted 5:43 pm
    11 May 2009

    Hey I am sorry to write so strongly but gosh, you can't do science with a wish, a plausible idea, and a nice computer - you have to make your point forcefully or people will think you are a useless twit.  And Tom wrote that stuff.  As you can tell, it didn't sit right with me. Let me apologize sincerely before proceeding here: I'm sorry about that, man.The fact of the matter is that the article of which we speak did not lay any sound scientific cause-and-effect for swine flu coming from a giant pig farm.  The facts as I know them are that swine flu was discovered several years ago in a hog farm in North Carolina, not somewhere in Mexico.  That swine flue strain modified and skipped geographically, who knows?  The CDC is trying to track it down and some researchers have gotten very close.  The notion that there was a plausible connection and some genetic possibility does not prove a fact using the scientific method, where the null hypothesis must be rejected and all contravening or multi-collinear impacts must be addressed. No, what we have here is journalistic license, similar to poetic license.  There was no proof, no smoking gun, no rejected hypothsis, no peer review, no consensus mentioned, just a big fat nice idea:  "it has to be those pig CAFOs."  Dangerous stuff here, man.Let's put it this way ... if I was a professor at a university or college.  As a journalism professor, I'd give it an "A" because the article was exciting, to the point, and appealed to readers in a visceral way.  If I was a professor of epidemiology, I would have to hand back the article and say "you did not do the assignment, so please have me something Monday morning." Other epi professors might go off the deep end like me.Respectfully and sorry for all the ho-doo, Clifford "Sam" Wells

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  7. Jim Goodman Posted 9:25 pm
    11 May 2009

    SO, are we, or farm animals or the environment better off because we have developed the CAFO system? I don't think so, I could be wrong, but tell me why, give me the benifits we reap from CAFO's.

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  8. dug Posted 8:19 am
    12 May 2009

    There is something truly amzing about the topic of this article and it's comments - it's the level of ignorance of the author and most if not all the commenters to the central issue involved. Flu variants similar to the current one in the media spotlight have been around for hundreds or thousands of years or longer. Perhaps H1N1 is new or perhaps our recently arrived technology to identify them simply hasn't seen them before - doesn't really matter in the big picture. Swine, avian and human flu virus mixes have come to North America via natural wild duck migrations - to our farms, farmers and hunters long before airplanes were invented and as long as Asia has been rearing pigs and ducks in the same farms (thousands of years). These are long known facts - but nobody wants to discuss them because it would lessen the drama of the current flu outbreak - not to mention it would spoil so many big pharma, ngo and political agendas for fund raising orgies on the back of the current media frenzy. CAFO's exist not by choice, they exist out of consumer demand economic efficiency realities. Consumers demand pork, beef and poultry and they want them as cheap as possible. CAFO's are the economic reality and response to this consumer demand. You can't support the world population on the pastoral family farms of the last century because the human population has exploded across the face of the planet. Anyone who thinks the world population can be fed on organic lettuce and free range chickens - is simply uninformed regarding scientific and economic realities. Not one commenter (that I saw) noted the real problem we face is not pigs, poultry, or the economically efficient CAFO's that produce them - it's the 'too damn many humans' that require them. If you want to reduce the probability of pandemics you have to reduce the human population below flash levels for contagion and in doing so you will reduce the need (food and economic) for intensive food production methods and other factors that will consequently lower viral transmission facilitation. If you are really concerned about pandemics - do something to start reducing the human population of this planet in your own family planning, in your community planning and in your nation. Force our spineless politicians to take up the issue of population planning in a serious and equitable way - before some disease (natural or man made bio-terror weapon) does it for us. Stop the hand wringing over the symptoms of our health/environmental threats and dwindling resource problems and start addressing the cause of these symptoms - us. We need to be better informed, smarter in our decision making and most of all - fewer.

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  9. Jim Goodman Posted 8:53 am
    12 May 2009

    Most people have never  been in a confinement animal facility. Disease spreading amoungst a large human population is definatly a growing problem, especially in a globalized world. People should be aware of the disease prevention measures CAFO's must use to keep animals alive, not to mention healthy. CAFO's do not produce food any cheaper than the pastoral farms or any other kind of farm, the bill for cheap food will need to be paid for some day through healthcare costs, environmental damage, and food and water shortages resulting from a food system that collapses from it's concentration and lack of natural diversity. Those who have worked in and seen the changes in the food system know this.

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  10. eeaaddgg's avatar

    eeaaddgg Posted 9:44 am
    12 May 2009

    Anyone who seriously believes this "hybrid" flu is anything less than a manufactured tool, is seriously mistaken. Dig (just a little) deeper than the front page and its follow-ups. This was only a test to see how we'd respond. The real pandemic will be unleashed soon enough (when the real evil-doers are ready). Now, to all of you who are so quickly skimming through to get to the end of my post so you can discredit it, I say this: Keep a copy of what you're debunking. You'll be smirking on the other side of your face soon enough, and without looking for the truth about this subversive operation. Seek out the truth, and it will set you (us) free.

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  11. dug Posted 10:15 am
    12 May 2009

    Jim, I agree with most of what you said especially about the higher level of disease managment in CAFO's than in extensive farms, but you are wrong about economic efficiency of CAFO's being higher than extensive farming methods. You are also correct that the general population has never been to well run CAFO's and only experienced the bad ones in media docu-dramas. I have made economic feasibility studies for, designed, built and operated intensive animal production systems for the past 30 years. The move to intensive production going on for the past 50-100 years around the developed world is not by accident, it's because intensive systems generally have been more econmically efficient and therefore more competitive in the production of food. Economically, there are always optimum intensities - beyond which you do lose money, so more and more intensification doesn't necessarily make the product cheaper. Just the land/value cost for extensive production in 1st world countries is often the economic fulcrum that tips the scales in favor of smaller foot print intensive systems. The more sophisticated management costs required in all food production is another disproportionately higher cost per unit product in extensive production. This trend will only continue with ever expanding human population growth and food demand. What often confuses the economic comparison betweem intensive and extensive production is the accurate evaluation and inclusion of all the production costs - which in the extensive systems are often ignored - especially in family farming where the family labor input is either undervalued or ignored totally. Unfortunately, environmental costs are just begining to be considered as part of the cost of doing agribusiness. As such, I would also agree with you that CAFO's have environmental costs that are not always completely accounted for. Then again if we are to feed the human population on extensive farming methods - there would be little or no land left uncleared because of the much higher foot prints required - that is one of the unaccounted cost of extensive farming. You could just as well say that the environmental costs of over human population are dramatically unaccounted for in general. If we did accurate environmental accounting we might well see that our species at its' current level of population is economically bankrupt from the long term environmental costs. Environmentalist rarely see their individual and their family's own existence as part of the overall problem in our planets rapid environmental degradation - from too many of one species - homo sapiens. Somehow we have to get all people to understand that too many people are the problem and then act accordingly. 

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  12. dug Posted 10:31 am
    12 May 2009

    I would agree that our response to H1N1 is indicative of our general lack of preparedness to deal with a pandemic - natural or manmade. Assuming you are correct, why not give us your unrefutable referrences of the proof that H1N1 is manmade tool - rather than have us dig them up - as you apparently already have? Share the knowledge. Otherwise how can we separate your comment from other apoclyptic end timer's posts and or risk waste our time pursuing any digging?

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  13. eeaaddgg's avatar

    eeaaddgg Posted 11:23 am
    12 May 2009

    Dug: "Risk wasting our time digging"? I never heard that one before! "Irrefutable references of proof" are seldom found in courts of law, and usually the results of Physics experiments. We all know when we smell a rat, when someone's intentions are less than stellar. The 'proof' you ask for isn't in one place. The best information isn't in pre-packaged, supermarket-style, one-click-for-relief-proof form. It's in various paragraphs of scattered gems in different articles by many knowledgable people (like reputable sceintists).These "missing virus" incidents from Fort Deitrick, etc. are very suspest. How do specimens 'go missing'? Especially in a militery base, where everything is counted and re-counted. If we let this kind of stuff slide with the usual, "Oh, well. That explains it" attitude that keeps us feeling informed, we are simply not doing our job as responsible human beings.This just in from the W.H.O. on lab error:
    http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=89293and this:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afrdATVXPEAk&refer=home   

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  14. eeaaddgg's avatar

    eeaaddgg Posted 11:40 am
    12 May 2009

    There's a lot of gold in this one page, if you take the time to read it, and see how much really adds up:http://www.naturalnews.com/z025760.html

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  15. dug Posted 1:49 pm
    12 May 2009

    Thank you for your edits. We all have lapses (especially since this blog doesn't provide spell check ability). BTW - you mispelled Fort Detrick and others. I'm sure your intent for gramarian help was not mere deflection, surely. The articles you offered and are simply not qualified technical referrences - even if the information they present supported your suppositions. Which as it turns out, they don't - even a little bit. The Frederick News (that journalistic bastion of science) - doesn't make any connection between or mention H1N1 flu and the purportedly unaccounted for viral (unnamed) samples. The Bloomberg article (a good news source, but not so much for science) specifically states that the CDC Director Nancy Cox (putting their jobs on the line) does not accept the science as adequate for evidence of the retired researcher (Gibbs) mentioned who is questioning the flu's origins. Even the lead researcher who is trying to trace the genetic origin of H1N1 was said to have no proof - "Gibbs said he has no evidence that the swine-derived virus was a delilberate, man-made product." The blog article on Natural News (another highly qualified everday source of scientific documentation) only raises the question of origin and mistakes, but offers not one shred of documentation to support your manmade virus suppositions.I don't disagree the possibility is always there for a manmade virus, but both the evidence for and the probability that H1N1 was a purposeful manmade creation is lacking completely in your position and support documents.  If anything your documents contradict your suppositions. Your logic that the H1N1 is just a practice recon for the real thing is - totally illogical. The last thing a true evil doer would do for a bio terror target is to give the target the opportunity of practice sessions in getting better prepared. Not to mention that manmade virus is becoming more and more genetically traceable to their origins - and their developers. For most critical thinkers you are going to have to provide a lot more convincing arguments and better sources than these. Thank you for not wasting my time in trying to find support (not) for your claims. Again, flu virus combinations - swine, avian and human combinations have been coming to us in the US for a very long time via wild duck migratory patterns. They suddenly appear in the US or Canada sometimes near farms sometimes not. As yet, there is nothing that I have seen that shows conclusively that H1N1 did not come about through typical flu type animal, avian, human interactions - whether in Asia or in Mexico - or some other location.

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  16. enviroperk Posted 3:57 pm
    12 May 2009

    I have trouble with the logic that CFAO's are more likely to result in more human to swine and swine to human exchange.If the NY Times numbers are correct, Smithfield can produce the same number of hogs with 900 people that previously took  424,930 hog farmers (477,030 - 52,100) in Romania (http://www.grist.org/article/2009-05-06-smithfield-globalization) would not that indicate less swine human contact, not more?  

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  17. Jim Goodman Posted 9:23 pm
    12 May 2009

    We do agree, CAFO's do not have a higher economic efficiency than extensive farming methods. Intensive systems are only more efficient when they can exploit some part of the production system. It may be the environment, or workers or livestock feed produced below the cost of production. Cheap food is available because people want it, and because it is possible to provide based on exploiting one or more parts of the production system. People would also probably like to have cheap Caddilacs, but GM has no intention of selling below the cost of production, as is the case with most food. GM has no problem with making a profit at the expense of the environment or moving production out of the US and exploiting workers in developing, non-unionized production facilities, but they still insist on keeping all the profits for the corporation. No cheap Cadillacs. Bottom line, intensive operations are more profitable only when they have one or more components of the production system that they can exploit, and in so doing, they keep their production costs below the true cost of production, We must also seperate food production from commodity crop production. Corn that yields 250bu/acre means little in terms of feeding people. Corn that yields  50 bu/acre when planted with squash and beans can produce much more food/acre, Indigenous farmers can feed themselves, their families and their villages. No corn for to sweeten soft drinks, or produce ethanol, but more food per acre.Cheap food in the US means 20 oz. soft drinks, CAFO produced livestock  and produce grown by underpaid and exploited migrant workers.Don't tell me it's more efficient, it's more profitable, screw the avoided costs.

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  18. dug Posted 9:44 am
    13 May 2009

    It seems we are both right. That's entirely possible because we are discussing several different problems. The first rule in efficient problem solving however, is to identify, prioritise and address one problem at a time when possible. Your mixing of the subsistence farming problem with the problem of providing global food stocks only confuses the solution issues. They are separate problems. Subsistence farming even if it were physically possible in all parts of the world, would only provide a very small fraction of the nutrient needs of the world population no matter how large a scale it was practiced on because it's inherently inefficient and mathematically inadequate for the scale of global demand. A very large part of the world population now lives in urban environments where subsistence farming isn't possible because the population density is too high and arable land simply does not exist or the water for it doesn't exist. Another often avoided fact is that a significant portion of the world population lives in marginal habitats, where even the best case subsistence production levels are inadequate. Biafra was a poster child for this subject 40 years ago.The worlds ugly big secret is that population wise we are far beyond the food production capabilities of subsistence, organic, and or any other "natural" productions methods. Over 95% of world food production is supported by the use petroleum based fertilizer. Take that fertilizer away overnight and there would be global starvation where maybe only 10% of the global human population would survive. When the food goes, so does social order, technology,  science and we would be back to feudal societies (just like Somalia today) almost over night - and non-petro based food production levels would only support the social order and global populations similar to the middle ages. That should tell you something about how precarious world food production is today. We live in world where entire fishery stocks can be wiped out in a couple of fishing seasons - and demand for fish is still not close to being met by fishing. And, where a shift in weather patterns and drought can make entire countries (in Africa) uninhabitable for years. If you really think subsistence farming is going to solve food production problems at this scale, you are either not in possession of the available facts, or simply in denial of them - like most of the world. Do the math for food demand on a global population scale. Much of the world is already in the first stages of a global food shortage - even with factory food production.I'm not denying that very localized and very qualified small scale food production problems can be solved by substituting a farmers labor in hand picking mixed crops (for mechanized harvesting) to increase per acre food production and nutrient variety over what he does on single crop isn't helpful to him. However, these kind of subsistence farming or organic farming techniques work at such a limited small scale, they are totally inadequate to offset the global food demand. So yes, subsistence farming might help and individual family or even a remote village to improve it's lot beyond what it would have otherwise, but it will do nothing for their millions of urban counter parts. Like it or not, we have reproduced ourselves to a point whereby necessity we now have to use the absolutely most efficient factory food producing processes possible to even come close to meeting global food demand. Let some event interrupt that factory process and a large part of humanity will starve. And yes the environment is and will continue to pay for it - like it does anytime when one species blooms out of control. It's just a matter of time to our population reaches and exceeds all possible ability in satisfying it's food and water needs and the population will collapse, as nature has clearly shown us - over and over.

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  19. Former Ag Teacher Posted 3:37 pm
    14 May 2009

    More proof that Tom Philpott jumped the gun, spewed unwarranted speculation and just generally did a poor job of writing:http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13622  The A H1N1 Pandemic: Pig to Human Transmission of the Swine Flu?http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afrdATVXPEAk&refer=home  Swine Flu May Be Human Error; WHO Investigates Claim http://www.cattlenetwork.com/Content.asp?ContentID=315081  NPPC:  Novel Flu Strain Not From Smithfield’s Mexican Hog Farm  WASHINGTON, D.C., May 14, 2009 – Mexico’s agriculture department today said the influenza strain that now has infected almost 4,300 people in 33 countries did not originate from hogs at a Smithfield Foods operation that had been singled out by some, including critics of modern pork production, as the source of the A-H1N1 flu virus. Test results released today by the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, Ranching, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) confirmed that the novel A-H1N1 virus was not in pigs at the Granjas Carroll de México farm in Veracruz. The pigs also tested negative for other viruses. While the news was welcomed by the National Pork Producers Council, the organization said the damage to the U.S. pork industry from mislabeling the strain “swine” flu has been done.  

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  20. MisterNiceGuy Posted 9:25 pm
    15 May 2009

    There are a couple of comments posted above that suggest widespread starvation would occur if CAFO agriculture ended. I think that suggestion might be a little overwrought. There are many millions of vegetarians in this world, and their diet would not be affected in the slightest if all meat CAFO’s ceased operation tomorrow. The millions of vegans among them wouldn’t be affected if the dairy and egg CAFO’s disappeared too. If the vegetarians and vegans would not notice the loss of CAFO, let alone starve, why would the loss of CAFO cause meat-eaters to starve? They might be forced to become unwilling vegetarians and learn to fulfil their dietary needs without meat or dairy, and that is a learning challenge that shouldn’t be glossed over, but vegetarians are living proof that the loss of CAFO agriculture needn’t result in anyone’s starvation. Please note – I’m not looking for a debate about vegetarianism.  I’m just commenting about the claims of imminent starvation. ---------- Hope this helps…      

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  21. splashy's avatar

    splashy Posted 2:21 am
    17 May 2009

    They may have been around for a century, but they weren't what you would call "standard practice" until the 80's and later (funny how that coincides with the rise of the Republicans/conservative rule). Until then, the animals got pasture time. They got to go outside, in the fresh air, and were rotated through different pastures. I worked on several dairies, and was around farmers, and they all knew the animals were healthier that way. They were decrying the rise of the factory farms, appalled at how the animals were treated.Then the big factory farms really got going and put a lot of the smaller family farms out of business. That was when things started going downhill. Remember when Willie Nelson and others that went to Washington trying to stop it with Farm Aid?

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  22. splashy's avatar

    splashy Posted 2:36 am
    17 May 2009

    Actually, animals that are allowed to be out in pastures are in less contact with humans because they are outside all day, especially if the humans are careful how they deal with the feces. The animals eat better food that does not encourage the growth of diseases if they can get to plants outside. Of course, they don't grow as fast, so those that only think of profit don't like that.Sunlight also helps to disinfect things, and while the animals are outside their indoor quarters can be scrubbed down.

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  23. splashy's avatar

    splashy Posted 2:43 am
    17 May 2009

    That's a very good point, mrniceguy. It's interesting how many people think you just have to have meat, some think you have to have it three times a day.I mean, it's nice to have some chicken or fish or a glass of milk now and then, but to think everyone will starve? Not likely.Well, unless they refuse to eat what's available. 

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