Our Hunger for Cheap Meat Has Created Swine Flu

A swelling number of scientists believe swine flu has not happened by accident. No: they argue this global pandemic - and all the deaths we are about to see - is the direct result of our demand for cheap meat. So is the way we produce our food really making us sick as a pig?

At first glance, this seems wrong. All through history, viruses have mutated, and sometimes they have taken nasty forms that scythe through the human population. This is an inescapable reality we just have to live with, like earthquakes and tsunamis. But the scientific evidence increasingly suggests that we have unwittingly invented an artificial way to accelerate the evolution of these deadly viruses - and pump them out across the world. They are called factory farms. They manufacture low-cost flesh, with a side-dish of viruses to go.

To understand how this happens, you have to compare two farms. My grandparents had a pig farm in the Swiss mountains, with around twenty swine at any one time. What happened there if, in the bowels of one of their pigs, a virus mutated and took on a deadlier form? At every stage, the virus would meet stiff resistance from the pigs' immune systems. They were living in fresh air, on the diet they evolved with, and without stress - so they had a robust ability to fight back. If the virus did take hold, it would travel only as far as the sick hog could walk. So if the virus would then have around twenty other pigs to spread and mutate in - before it would hit the end of its own evolutionary path, and die off.

If it was a really lucky, plucky virus, it might make it to market - where it would come up against more healthy pigs living in small herds. It has little opportunity to fan out across a large population of pigs or evolve a strain that could be transmitted to humans.

Now compare this to what happens when a virus evolves in a modern factory farm. In most swine farms today, six thousand pigs are crammed snout-to-snout in tiny cages where they can barely move, and are fed for life on an artificial pulp, while living on top of cess-pools of their own stale faeces.

Instead of having just twenty pigs to experiment and evolve in, the virus now has a pool of thousands, constantly infecting and reinfecting each other. The virus can combine and recombine again and again. The ammonium from the waste they live above burns the pigs' respiratory tracts, making it easier yet for viruses to enter them. Better still, the pigs' immune systems are in free-fall. They are stressed, depressed, and permanently in panic, making them far easier to infect. There is no fresh air or sunlight to bolster their natural powers of resistance. They live in air thick with viral loads, and they are exposed every time they breathe in.

As Dr. Michael Greger, director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States, explains: "Put all this together, and you have a perfect storm environment for these super-strains. If you wanted to create global pandemics, you'd build as many of these factory farms as possible. That's why the development of swine flu isn't a surprise to those of us in public health community. Back in 2003, the American Public Health Association - the oldest and largest in world - called for a moratorium of factory farming because they saw something like this would happen. It may take something as serious as a pandemic to make us realise the real cost of factory farming."

Many of the detailed studies of factory farms that have been emerging in the past few years reinforce this argument. Dr Ellen Silbergeld is Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. She tells me her detailed on-the-ground studies led her to conclude there is "very much" a link from factory farms to the new, more powerful forms of flu we are experiencing. "Instead of a virus only having one spin of the roulette wheel, it has thousands and thousands of spins, for no extra cost. It drives the evolution of new diseases."

Until yesterday, we could only speculate about the origins of the current H1N1 virus killing human beings - but now we know more. The Centre for Computational Biology at Columbia University has studied the virus and found that it is not a new emergence of a triple human-swine-bird flu virus. It is a slight variant on a virus we have seen before. We can see its family tree - and its daddy was a virus that evolved in the artificial breeding ground of a vast factory farm in North Carolina.

Did this strain evolve, too, in the same circumstances? Already, the evidence is suggestive, although far from conclusive. We know that the city where this swine flu first emerged - Perote, Mexico - contains a massive industrial pig farm, and houses 950,000 pigs. Dr Silbergeld adds: "Factory farms are not biosecure at all. People are going in and out all the time. If you stand a few miles down-wind from a factory farm, you can pick up the pathogens easily. And, like in the US, the manure from these farms isn't disposed of according to any regulations, even though we know viruses can remain alive in it for more than a month. They can just sit in cesspools. The viruses can be transmitted from there by flies."

It's no coincidence that we have seen a sudden surge of new viruses in the past decade at precisely the moment when factory farming has intensified so dramatically. For example, between 1994 and 2001, the number of American pigs that live and die in vast industrial farms in the US spiked from 10 percent to 72 percent. Swine flu had been stable since 1918 - and then suddenly, in this period, went super-charged.

How much harm will we do to ourselves in the name of cheap meat? We know that bird flu developed in the world's vast poultry farms. And we know that pumping animal feed full of antibiotics in factory farms has given us a new strain of MRSA. It's a simple, horrible process. The only way to keep animals alive in such dirty conditions is to pump their feed full of antibiotics. But this has triggered an arms race with bacteria, which start evolving to beat the antibiotics - and emerge as in the end as pumped-up, super-charged bacteria invulnerable to our medical weapons. This system gave birth to a new kind of MRSA that now makes up 20 percent of all human infections with the virus. Sir Liam Donaldson, the British government's Chief Scientist, warns: "Every inappropriate use in animals or agriculture [of antibiotics] is potentially a death warrant for a future patient."

Of course, agribusinesses is desperate to deny all this is happening: their bottom line depends on keeping this model on its shaky trotters. But once you factor in the cost of all these diseases and pandemics, cheap meat suddenly looks like an illusion.

We always knew that factory farms were a scar on humanity's conscience - but now we know they are a scar on our health. If we carry on like this, bird flu and swine flu will be just the beginning of a century of viral outbreaks. As we witness a global pandemic washing across the world, we need to shut down these virus factories - before they shut down even more human lives.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. To read more of his articles, click here or here.

Comments

[Calinative]

As a meat eater, I find the title of this article offensive. I don't hunger for cheap meat. I hunger for the best prime rib. But that's also the most expensive.
We're not all going to become vegans and try to live off twigs and tofu. So why not be realistic about the solutions?

[darker]

Business that's CRAZY FOR UNRESTRAINED PROFITEERING will do anything to justify its actions and inactions.

This will continue to go on for years, even though THAT WAY of doing business CRASHED OUR ECONOMY and now crashes health and kills people.

[Crowhaul]

The animal-as-commodity model is what has led us here... It's wrong, and every shareholder who profits off it is to blame.

[Catothemuchyounger]

What cheap meat? Last I checked, good quality meat is still pretty pricey.

[NoMoFearNoMoHate]

Right, but that is to pay for obscene CEO pay and the somewhat lesser shareholder payoff... you've got to wonder why shareholders let the CEOs take all their money when they could take home lots more themselves if they capped CEO pay?

[Nezua]

Word. I worked in one of these joints at 16, chicken CAFO. It's a sort of hell.

Tell you what, come take a pretty stroll with me over the septic lagoons. http://theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete/2009/04/26/the-story-of-a-cafo-survivor/

[pogo]

This is why I only eat free range, organic beef. At least, that's what it says on the sign over the gate of the ranch where I steal it.

[cloudy]

I fully agree with the critique of factory farming, but blaming it on the consumer ("OUR hunger for cheap meat") is reflective of a kind of 'hunger for a cheap shot'. It is reminiscient of the old Rolling Stones' line "Never mind who killed the Kennedys, for after all it was you and me". No it wasn't.

It is the "hunger" for profits, and the crusade for nonregulation of irresponsible corporate capitalist interests, both in the US (NC) and abroad (Mexico, where business regulations are even more lax, at least in enforcement). But if the US regulated all meat that was not only PRODUCED in the US, but that was MARKETED in the US, the impact on companies like Smithfield would be profound.

What is needed is a structure of control over farming practices, and if it results in advantaging old-fashioned farms like those of the author's grandfather (doubtful, but there's always the universality of dreaming), then so be it.

[Nezua]

It was you and me. We all contribute to the standing situation and consequences thereof, if only by inaction—unless you believe we are powerless to do anything aside from comment on blogs.

[sherifffruitfly]

The history of human civilization includes the history of germs and other little beasties jumping from animals to people. Get over it.

[jozinha]

Really.

[nomoredead]

Just looked on Earth Google at...Perote Vera Cruz Mexico Smithfield...and saw the acres of pig waste that is very visible.

[bayside]

If what I heard was true, it was a combination of human flu, bird flu and three continents of swine flu.. Not possible. I bet its not factory farm at all but man made..We will find out eventually..

[arbie]

Swine flu is caused from the conditions hogs are kept in, cages where they cannot even lie down. Their stress level causes the immune system to be e comprimised and they develop this flu virus which spreads to humans. it is an air borne virus and a mask will not help. This Country needs to stop the cause of swine flu, prevent the inhumane treatment of hogs or any animal raised for the food chain. This will prevent any future viruses caused by hogs or chickens.

[research]

Family farms may be even worse for creating Swine Flu pandemics.

Typically the family farm is open to the air and avian virus contact.

The triple threat is pigs with viruses, gets avian viruses, get human viruses, blends them and infects people.

That's how 1918 and many other past pandemics evolved.

End domestication of pigs.

[jozinha]

New story on this on the main page. Also the story behind it

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-30-cdc-swine-strain/

says:

"Q: Do large farms have more swine flu?

R.D.: Not really. Even folks who have 50 pigs have to buy feed and supply from vendors that go from farm to farm, and they don’t wash their boots or whatever. Usually the virus is transmitted very effectively."

I don't think it's so much factory conditions (if it were we'd be up to our eyeballs in ki ller flu allt the time) as much as it is simply the amount of meat we manufacture and consume. We'd eat the same amount even if it were more expensive.

So we've got to cut way down. But we're not the only culture that if given the chance will go meat crazy. This flu might have started here, but it could have started anywhere there is massive meat consumption.

[Hollyse]

PROBLEM...­REACTION..­.SOLUTION should be applied to EVERY ACTION taken by US governemt towards issues where creating the PROBLEM, yet first thinks of the SOLUTION then inventing the problem. It's not so obvious as we're given psychological government "health care tactics". Usual feed patterns of government towards it's citizens is "We do what 's best for you. Never question the 'killings' and 'taxation' we impose upon you the people. We know better than you. We know what's good for you." People understand the PROBLEM... REACTION...SOLUTION if living in a real Republic-Democratic society, however this nation hasn't been our individual national political birth certification for decades and possibly even centuries. We're experiencing the reaction period and the next step for unifying the USA with Mexico then setting the alarm to a wake up Canadians to get on board the North American Alliance or unification train is leaving. The best psychologists are working on rearranging PROBLEM...­REACTION..­. SOLUTION, order changing to another historical interplay of Clinton's "is". Seeing SOLUTION first , t hen REACTION and PROBLEM. Depending on what "is" of the moment...Bill Clinton's contribution to modernizing confusing language in office... Webster should know that's it controlled by the winner of wars (Clinton) and not the losers. This applies to basic power structure on any day of the week, month, and year depending on the politics of the day. Could it be we're dealing with SOLUTION (first) , REACTION to the SOLUTION and then finding a PROBLEM?

[Eyeheartfreedumb]

This is what happens when we let what was once commonly referred to as "the idiot box" do our "thinking" and "debate" for us. The ignorance put forth and encouraged by television is a true epidemic.

[RickCadena]

Johann, thank you for a very informative, thought provoking article. I also think that in addition to all of the different types of possible viruses resulting from factory farms, people should take into consideration all the problems with cancer, diabetes, hardened arteries, heart attacks, strokes, etc. Why do so many people come down with cancer? Because of all the poison in the food that we eat. Having cattle, poultry, and hogs all in a confined or jail-like environment breeds all of the germs that you spoke about, and then add all the antibiotics given to the animals so that they can produce, come hell or highwater, and the world poisons itself. I hope that the world wakes up and smells the coffee, otherwise if global warming does not get us, massively produced poisoned food will.