Doth Smithfield Protest Too Much? Swine Flu Brings Focus to Factory Farm Practices
As I wrote earlier this week, the virus formerly known as the swine flu (although the CDC continues to say that indeed the H1N1 strain does, as initially reported, contain swine, human and avian virus components) seems quite likely to have links to an industrial hog operation in the La Gloria community where the outbreak was believed to have started, although new information suggests that this strain of the flu may actually have origins in the US as well as Asia. As could be expected, Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork processor and co-owner of the La Gloria facility in question, came out early last weekend denying culpability in the outbreak.
With test results at the La Gloria facility painfully slow to emerge, I want to point out here that I'm not saying definitively that this flu is the result of Smithfield's practices, but I do tend to follow the reasoning of Tom Philpott of Grist, writing on the 28th:
The question now becomes: Did the outbreak that started in February and killed three kids involve swine flu-or was the 4-year-old boy's infection an isolated case? If not-if the La Gloria epidemic turns out to be ground zero of the infection-could the swine-flu outbreak have originated literally in the shadows of Granjas Carroll's hog confinements, and not have some tie to intensive hog farming? That's a question that health authorities have to vigorously pursue.
Today, Smithfield CEO Larry Pope sat down for an interview on CNBC to counter the rumors. From the interview:
POPE: Oh. You-- in fact, our-- our team that went down even this week, they have not been allowed on the farm yet. Because they haven't-- they haven't satisfied the quarantine period. So our own executives can't go on the farm until they've satisfied a quarantine. But I tell people when you visit our farms, I'm not concerned about you. I'm concerned about the pigs. I'm concerned about you contaminating the pigs. Not the pigs contaminating you.
BURNETT: And this is because pigs and humans, in terms of DN-- there--
there's a lot of similarities.POPE: There are.
BURNETT: That's the bottom line. So that's why diseases can go back and
forth.POPE: People-- people can give it to them. They can give-- they can
give some to people on-- on occasion. But this doesn't appear to be
that case at all. It doesn't appear to be there at all. And again, it
doesn't transmit through the meat.
That nobody has been sickened by eating the meat is not at issue, though one could imagine why such a question would be of great importance to the head of the largest pork production company in the world. It is interesting to note that nobody has said specifically that a person could not be infected by handling raw pork from an animal that was infected. I think it's also worth noting here what Pope doesn't come right out and say -- that conditions at their facilities create such a tenuous situation for the health of these animals that they have to take these precautions (which may be preventing some of those quite-slow test results) when humans visit these facilities.
Whether or not scientists pin this strain of influenza on Smithfield, the fact that factory farms are a breeding ground for infectious diseases is well documented. Hans-Gerhard Wagner, a senior officer with the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, has called the "intensive industrial farming of livestock" an "opportunity for emerging disease."
Not only that, but the ecological implications of industrial agriculture are worth mentioning here as well. Interestingly enough, Jeff Tietz's 2006 Rolling Stone article, Boss Hog, is still among the best I've seen on the subject.
In it, Tietz points out that a single Smithfield plant in Utah, housing a half million animals, generates more fecal waste per year than the 1.5 million people in Manhattan. He goes on to point out that companies like Smithfield are not required to treat said waste in the manner that local governments are required to treat human waste and that:
The excrement of Smithfield hogs is hardly even pig sh*t: On a continuum of pollutants, it is probably closer to radioactive waste than to organic manure. The reason it is so toxic is Smithfield's efficiency.Smithfield's holding ponds -- the company calls them lagoons -- cover as much as 120,000 square feet. The area around a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not brown. The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink.
Even light rains can cause lagoons to overflow; major floods have transformed entire counties into pig-sh*t bayous. To alleviate swelling lagoons, workers sometimes pump the sh*t out of them and spray the waste on surrounding fields, which results in what the industry daintily refers to as "overapplication." This can turn hundreds of acres -- thousands of football fields -- into shallow mud puddles of pig sh*t. Tree branches drip with pig sh*t.
Some pig-farm lagoons have polyethylene liners, which can be punctured by rocks in the ground, allowing sh*t to seep beneath the liners and spread and ferment. Gases from the fermentation can inflate the liner like a hot-air balloon and rise in an expanding, accelerating bubble, forcing thousands of tons of feces out of the lagoon in all directions.
All of this excrement has implications outside of the arena of public health. Tietz goes on to quote the then-chairman of Smithfield, one Joseph Luter III, as saying that the company had been charged by the Environmental Protection Agency with "a very, very small percent" (seventy-four at the time, compared to 2.5 million) of what he viewed as potential charges.
In 1997, the EPA hit Smithfield with the largest Clean Water Act fine to date ($12.6 million) for dumping "illegal levels of pollutants from their slaughterhouse into the Pagan River."
Also from Tietz, on the impact of all that waste in waterways:
Hog farms in North Carolina also emit some 300 tons of nitrogen into the air every day as ammonia gas, much of which falls back to earth and deprives lakes and streams of oxygen, stimulating algal blooms and killing fish.
And on the company's pollution track record:
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.
Whether or not Smithfield is "at fault" for H1N1, what is clear is that their facilities have been impacting public and environmental health for years. Here's hoping that the powers that be, once they've managed to containe this virus, will turn their attention to that.
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Beyond cruelty factory farms should be scrutinized over their excessive use of antibiotics in animals making it more likely to cause viral mutations that can easily wipe out human populations. Like Monsanto pumping animals with things you wouldn't dream of injecting yourself with, yet you might eat it no questions asked or pass it onto your child through breast milk or non-organic dairy products..
He says none of the pigs are sick.
All of the pigs are sick!! Hence Tietz's reference to the "perpetual state of dying" that the pigs are in.
Factory farms are death camps in an ongoing animal holocaust. Disease is just the tip of bloodberg. I am so glad I'm vegetarian.
I abhor the factory farming system for many reasons, including for its torturing of animals and poisoning of our air, earth, water and food. I support laws introducing regulations and reforms governing how these operations may operate. But even if regulations arrive down the road and corporations such as Smithfield must alter their practices to comply with them, shouldn't the company pay now for the damage it has caused? It's absolutely absurd that Smithfield was fined $12 million by the EPA--the penalty should have been 100 or 1000 times greater. Smithfield can brush off little punishments like that without blinking an eye; $12 million is nothing to them. In fact, fines are not even enough. If a corporation causes horrendous damage, it should have its corporate charter revoked and be prohibited from operating, at least for a certain period of time. If we're going to legally define corporations as people, then criminal corporations should be locked out of society just like people until they've learned their lesson. Instead, we only ask that they cough up the everyman equivalent of a parking ticket, then wait until they break the law again.
The real issue is the inhumane practices on factory farms. Everyday animals raised for food suffer cruelty and neglect, the abuse is never reported, never investigated and never stopped. We are a nation of animal lovers yet when it comes to animals considered "food" we keep them confined in overcrowed factory farms, caged, deprived, drugged and manhandled. These "food "animals are a living, feeling beings. We must put an end to factory farming. For our health, our planet and the animals.
Vegans think clearly.
But do vegans think ecologically? That's the question.
While I totally respect your choices, sanctimonious postings do not advance your cause. They simply make you look smug and more important, isolate you from the real issues at hand. And that hurts animals, the last thing on earth you want to do.
It is odd when you think about our attitudes towards pets. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs. People are so disconnected between the sterile supermarket where meat is purchased and the horrific CAFOs where meat is produced. Most people simply do not know, and I think their habits would change if they did know.
Wait until the flu hooks up with MRSA. Children are so vunerable, they would probably be safer on a pig farm than in an emergency room in America. Health care as shamelessly gone the way of Wall Street for too long. In Tennessee and Virginia apparently profit care comes ahead of patient care.
http://www
MRSA is a bacteria and Swine Flu is a virus. I don't thinks there's gonna be a hook-up anytime soon.
There is a connection between MRSA and COFAs. The abuse of antibiotics leads to resistance. They shouldn't be allowed to give antibiotics to "healthy" animals. Of course, the pigs couldn't survive in the horrific conditions they're kept in without them.
There's something YOU can do about this: stop eating pork. Stop supporting the system. Vote with your fork and urge others to as well. Watch CNN's Jane Velez-Mitchell discuss swine flu and its relation to inhumane farming practices http://www
Buying as local as possible from people you know and trust and growing your own as much as possible helps in all ways. The urban garden movement should get a boost from incidents like this.
There is a house bill everyone who cares about the local food movement and family farms should really pay attention to. H.R. 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act, so called, threatens to put the food police into every small farm and hand over control of our food supply to corporate farms and control over food inspection is being handed over to the FDA from the Department of Agriculture.
Check out the bill and the controversy surrounding it and write your congressman. If we want safe food, this bill will make that almost impossible. It has one of those nice titles like The Patriot Act that makes it seem like it's there to help but it's just another power grab by the federal government.
another one everyone should read up on that is just as insidious is NAIS(National Animal Identification System) that is a massive bureaucratic surveillance system for anyone owning a livestock animal including horses and livstock pet-owners.
this program, if it passes, will force all small, independent, hobbyist farmers out of business and leave consumers with no food choices .
check out:
nonais.org
"The farmer would point out that even vegans have a "serious clash of interests" with other animals. The grain that the vegan eats is harvested with a combine that shreds field mice, while the farmer's tractor crushes woodchucks in their burrows, and his pesticides drop songbirds from the sky. Steve Davis, an animal scientist at Oregon State University, has estimated that if America were to adopt a strictly vegetarian diet, the total number of animals killed every year would actually increase, as animal pasture gave way to row crops. Davis contends that if our goal is to kill as few animals as possible, then people should eat the largest possible animal that can live on the least intensively cultivated land: grass-fed beef for everybody. It would appear that killing animals is unavoidable no matter what we choose to eat."
--Michael Pollan
http://www
http://www
What if we eat locally-grown (including home-grown crops) that don't require the use of a a giant combine or pesticides?
then I expect the farmer is totally ok with losing half his crop to deer and rodents. he'd never consider killing the woodland creatures stealing his family's livelhood.
Food has blood on it. Make peace with that idea, or make yourself into worm food.
Honestly Michael Pollan - yes, more field mice may be killed but at least they are running around freely. How can you compare field mice dying to the inhumane way we are raising animals for food? Reverting to a vegetarian diet doesn't mean no rules and regulations (as is the case with factory farms) and the abundant use of pesticides. There are organic ways to farm and if everyone voted for organic farming with their forks, the price of organic foods would come down. We have to change our paradigms. As a fan of yours, I am disappointed with your comment.
The silence is deafening because 99% of people (including most of those who claim they "only" eat so-called free range products) eat factory farmed meat/dairy/eggs.
98% of the meat/dairy/eggs out there is factory farmed.
According to someone at this location: http://fro
The survey found that farmers were the most likely to have antibodies in their bloodstream to fight off swine influenza, which researchers say indicates previous infection with the virus . . . while processors showed lower rates . . ..
"Right now, swine workers are not included in the national pandemic plan, nor are they closely monitored for influenza," Gray said. "Should pandemic influenza virus strains enter the United States and these workers not be given special attention, we think it could be a really big problem for Iowa."
Between 2002 and 2004, researchers studied 111 Iowa farmers, 97 meat-processing workers, 65 veterinarians and 79 individuals uninvolved in the swine industry.
The survey found that farmers were the most likely to have antibodies in their bloodstream to fight off swine influenza, which researchers say indicates previous infection with the virus . . . while processors showed lower rates . . .. "
which it quotes from here...
http://web
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