Large-scale swine producers in Mexico deny that their industry is the source of the deadly new influenza strain, saying the animals are all healthy, and that it is scientifically "not possible" for hogs to infect people with the illness. But lawmakers in the eastern state of Veracruz are now charging that large-scale hog and poultry operations are "breeding grounds" of infection that are making people sick and fueling the pandemic.
On Sunday, the state government of Veracruz confirmed swine influenza in a five-year-old girl in the village of La Gloria, located near a massive US-owned hog facility. The bodies of two other village children who died in February and March will be exhumed and tested for signs of the illness, local media reports said.
And in the western state of Guerrero, 500 pigs were just killed after becoming ill with swine flu.
The nation's hog industry says it is not to blame for any human illness. "We deny completely that the influenza virus affecting Mexico originated in pigs, because it has been scientifically demonstrated that this is not possible," said a statement issued by the National Organization of Pig Production and Producers and its president, Mario Humberto Quintanilla González.
The group said it had ordered a series of lab tests and sought technical support from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and others, "in order to demonstrate, once again, that pigs are not the cause of the flu that is affecting the country. It must remain clear that the flu problem is caused neither by the proximity to swine operations nor by the consumption of pork meat or pork products."
The statement went on to say, however, that pork producers, "will respect whatever scientific determination is made as to the actual causes that have provoked this health problem."
Meanwhile, one of Mexico's largest producers, Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of US hog giant Smithfield Foods, issued its own statement saying there was no sign of swine flu at any of its operations in the states of Veracruz and Puebla. The company's huge facility near the town of La Gloria was first mentioned as a possible source of the new human-swine flu outbreak by Tom Philpott at www.grist.org.
According to El Universal newspaper, the company reported no signs of disease in any of its 907 workers - nor in its 60,000 breeding sows or 500,000 feeder pigs, all of whom were vaccinated against swine flu. "The press release stated that that the virus was found in people who were not near swine production facilities, and who did not have contact with pigs, and therefore, 'it has been concluded that the contagion has been between humans,'" El Universal reported.
But the industry statement that this disease was not transmitted from pigs to people contradicts virtually all Mexican government statements so far, including Mexico's Health Minister, Jose Angel Cordova, who said the virus, "mutated from pigs, and then at some point was transmitted to humans." Whether they were Mexican pigs or not remains a mystery, of course.
As Philpott pointed out in his post, Mexican newspapers have been reporting for weeks that residents living near Granjas Carroll's massive hog facility at La Gloria are falling ill with severe upper respiratory diseases. One five-year-old girl in the village just tested positive for swine flu - the bodies of two more children who died recently are being exhumed.
According to an April 5 article in La Jornada newspaper, "Clouds of flies emanate from the lagoons where Granjas Carroll discharges the fecal waste from its hog barns - as well as air pollution that has already caused an epidemic of respiratory infections in the town."
More than 400 people had already been treated for respiratory infections, and more than 60 percent of the town's 3,000 residents had reported getting sick, the paper said. State officials disputed that claim, and said the illnesses were caused by cold weather and dust in the air.
The problems began in early March, when many neighbors of the hog CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) became sick with colds and flu that quickly turned into lung infections, causing local health officials to impose a "sanitary cordon" around the area and begin a mass program of vaccination and home fumigation.
"According to state agents of the Mexican Social Security Institute, the vector of this outbreak are the clouds of flies that come out of the hog barns, and the waste lagoons into which the Mexican-US company spews tons of excrement," La Jornada reported. "Even so, state and federal authorities paid no attention to the residents, until today."
The state legislature of Veracruz has demanded that the Smithfield subsidiary turn over all documents and environmental certifications on its three massive waste lagoons, but so far, the company has only supplied information on one of them, news reports said today.
On Friday, the chairman of the state legislature's Committee on the Environment, Marco Antonio Núñez López, called on Veracruz's Secretary of Health to impose a "sanitary cordon" around all hog and poultry CAFOs in the area - as well as bus terminals and airports - to prevent the spread of influenza among the population.
He said the factory farms should be considered "breeding grounds" (focos rojos - which might also translate as "hot spots") of potential infection for the cities of Veracruz, Boca del Río, Coatzacoalcos, Córdoba, Orizaba, Xalapa and Perote.
"I asked the Secretary to inform us about what was going on in La Gloria with Granjas Carroll, because avian flu is spreading from birds to pigs, and from there to humans, and that urgent measures are needed," Núñez López told reporters.
He was referring to another CAFO, this one containing poultry, called Granjas de Bachoco, located near the state capital of Xalapa. He said there was an epidemic of avian flu among the chickens being raised there, but that this was being kept quiet so as not to interfere with exports. Influenza-infected chickens raise the risk of cross-infection to pigs in the same area, scientists say.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Mexico, about halfway between Mexico City and Acapulco in the town of Cocula, Guerrero, health officials ordered the destruction of 500 pigs infected with swine flu, local newspapers reported. One hundred of the animals fell sick at the Rancho La Joya operation and were sacrificed last Wednesday. On Thursday, 400 more infected pigs were killed.
There is no proof that this illness emerged on a Mexican hog factory farm, or in Mexico, or even in hogs. But we do know that Mexican pigs with swine flu are being destroyed. And we know that Mexican lawmakers think that CAFOs are making people sick.
And now we know that a five-year-old girl in La Gloria has swine flu. I wonder if the CDC is going to go check on her, and see how she contracted that virus.
NOTE: For more on this subject, please see yesterday's post
Or when Mad Cow disease was spreading through overcrowded factory farm cow populations both here and in the UK?
The point is, these have been around, and evolving for some time. Factory farms do play a role because they offer a breeding ground for virus/ to spread and evolve faster. You have a crowd, especially kept in squalid, inhuman conditions, and you will have disease and it will spread quickly. This is basic biological science that you learn in high school! Just as illnesses spread more quickly from person to person when we are in crowded and confided places (hence the current concern over public schools, airplanes). Yet we don't choose to apply these same precautions of minimizing overcrowding and filth to our own sources of food. .
We new the virus' were out there and evolving, people were warned about the risk of factory farming and the conditions we keep our own food supply in. People were warned that factories help disease spread and evolve more quickly, people have been given opportunities on ballots to change these things, but we still choose to do nothing, we choose not to care about animal welfare or our own health, and then everyone acts surprised when something like this happens.
From the Madison WI News: " In 1998, a new swine flu virus, a human-pig hybrid, had infected a massive hog operation in North Carolina. By the next year, it had acquired two gene segments from bird viruses as well, mutating into what Greger called a "never-before described triple reassortment virus -- a hybrid of a human virus, a SWINE virus, and a bird virus." In months, that unusual strain spread to 22 other states, including Wisconsin."
Also this website:
http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/swine_flu_virus_origin_1998_042909.html
I know the HSUS has a subjective point of view, but everyone should note the long list of REFERENCES FROM SCHOLARLY WORKS at the end of the article that says exactly where all the information came from. Here's one that shows they knew of a hybrid virus back in 1999
Zhou NN, Senne DA, Landgraf JS, et al. 1999. Genetic reassortment of avian, swine, and human influenza A viruses in American pigs. Journal of Virology 73:8851-6
Another on the evolution of this virus written in 2000!
Webby RJ, Swenson SL, Krauss SL, Gerrish PJ, Goyal SM, and Webster RG. 2000. Evolution of swine H3N2 influenza viruses in the United States. Journal of Virology 74:8243-51.
I realize I’m amongst the minority here, but I think it’s important to note — as David Kirby did in this article — that there is no evidence thus far that any of the people currently diagnosed with this strain of influenza have been in contact with pigs. As a pork producer, I share the concerns of the global health community about preventing the spread of this strain of influenza. I understand that the five-year-old girl who died from the Swine Influenza A/H1N1 lived in a village located near a hog facility. However, proximity to a farm doesn’t automatically mean the hog farm is the originating source. As I understand it, they have not been able to find this virus in any swine so far. This strain of influenza is being spread by human-to-human contact and we must withhold judgment until we receive official confirmation regarding the flu’s source.
http://theredwhiteandgreen.com/2009/04/28/swine-flu-and-the-origins-of-kosher-law/
Pigs are unique in the animal kingdom in their ability to host humans and avian viruses.
These viruses can combine in the pigs.
Humans resist virus well if they are similar to older viruses.
Combination viruses from pigs are different from either and thus the most deadly.
And yes, swine flu would be more prevalent and capable of spreading in a highly concentrated pig farm. More pigs, more germs. I know Mexican govt. lobbying when I hear it. I live in America. I'm an expert on lawmakers who ignore public safety, health, economic dangers to the masses so they can make money enabling lobbyists.
60% of the population in La Gloria got sick. Now the children bodies have been buried and the government refuses to take them out and check for infection because they say there's no link between their death and the new virus. Inhabitants of La Gloria have been fighting for a long time to stop Granjas Carroll from polluting the water and contaminating the air. The response: they were harassed, imprisoned and are currently on trial. This all issue has been known for years!
Many articles were published regarding the situation in La Gloria during the last weeks but strangely, not that the new virus is out nobody mentions that anymore.
I live in Mexico and I'm outraged by this situation. What can we do to fight this giant multi-national monster called Smithfield Foods?
Please help!
Here's a link with some pictures from the pig farm in La Gloria:
http://suburbiodeimagen.blogspot.com/2009/04/contaminacion-de-granjas-carroll-de.html
Do you need any more evidence than that?
thanks for posting that information.
maybe you could send your blog and any other pertinent source links to Rachel Maddow,
http://www.rachelmaddow.com/
she's also on facebook and twitter.
or Ed Shultz
http://www.wegoted.com/news/detail.asp?newsID=749
or maybe Sam Stein here from Huffington Post will pick up on your story.
We can save 100's of million of people's lives by eliminating domestic pigs.
Pigs are one of the few animals that both avian viruses and human virus can coexist and create radically different and dangerous pandemics.
Reasonably, we could require U.S. produced and imported meats to be grown without anitbiotics and hormones, and the health community should be pushing that as simple common sense measures. There will be better efficacy for remaining viable antibiotics if we aren't busy creating superbugs on factory farms. It will mean meat will be more expensive, but water quality standards to keep out deadly bacteria also has a cost we must bear. Where is your comfort zone (in a small world), and how are you going to get other nations to accomodate the level of prevention we'd like to see, is the question.
But I don't know - we may have just about run the course of a century long respite from the humbling devestation of stuff that took awhile to adapt to antibiotics, and it remains to be seen if some next-gen medical technology will get here fast enough to keep us anywhere near as safe going forward.
Though neither am I sure that is what caused the Swine Flu...I do know that the state of our agricultural industry is a mess, and not tenable, and unhealthy.
This country cannot afford epidemics of crappy food to come into this country or be made here....
don't eat the peanut butter - it could kill you. We are sick and tired -literally of this corporate greed and corruption at the FDA - they should all be fired. Why don't they hire people that don't have bribery of the brain- instead of putting public safety first?
So we have ended up with acres and acres of intensive agro-biz farms with the narrow range of optimal pig species creating an explosive hotspot for disease. The profit motive has no memory and cannot factor in lessons from the past like the Irish Potato Famine that killed millions when blight hit that single strain of food being mass grown.
Lax enforcement of regulations and political corruption in Mexico are just the symptom of the naked greed of Corpo-Companies bribing or cajoling the turning of a blind eye to safe practices in the demand for cheap resources (here - pork).
Once again the mantra is privatize the profits and socialize the losses. I'm sure some hapless pig farmer in Mexico will be held up as the scapegoat. I pre-empt by acknowledging pork doesn't spread the disease, but the industrial farms surely did. So the blame, I suggest, lies with the feckless politicians on both sides of the border who rammed the whole NAFTA deal and other corporate friendly policies for their global hegemony.
Mexico has stringent environmental and health laws. US companies set up shop in remote parts of Mexico and bribe their way around them. If the stories about Smithfield in Vera Cruz turn out to be true I hope there will be prosecutions in both nations. I am not holding my breath, especially on the US side of the border.
The local newspapers in the State of Sonora report the state health ministry has 3 confirmed cases in the largest of the Mexican states that borders the US, about 1200 miles north of Mexico City, the epicenter of the outbreak.
I detest Smithfield, would never, ever buy anything from that company, won't even visit the town of Smithfield, VA where they are headquartered, I'm about an hour's away.
PERDUE, TYSON, SMITHFIELD they're all one in the same....corporate greed HOGS.
http://www.awionline.org/farm/news/rfkpoland.htm