 |
MediSin
Get your Free copy with donation
Categories
Apr
27
Posted 11:06 AM on 25 Apr 2009
by Tom Philpott
The outbreak of a new flu strain—a nasty mash-up of swine, avian, and human viruses—has infected 1000 people in Mexico and the U.S., killing 68. The World Health Organization warned Saturday that the outbreak could reach global pandemic levels.
Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carrol, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web sit.
On Friday, the U.S. disease-tracking blog Biosurveillance published a timeline of the outbreak containing this nugget, dated April 6 (major tip of the hat to Paula Hay, who alerted me to the Smithfield link on the Comfood listserv and has written about it on her blog, Peak Oil Entrepreneur):
Residents [of Perote] believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to “flu.” However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen responsible for this outbreak.
From what I can tell, the possible link to Smithfield has not been reported in the U.S. press. Searches of Google News and the websites of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal all came up empty. The link is being made in the Mexican media, however. “Granjas Carroll, causa de epidemia en La Gloria,” declared a headline in the Vera Cruz-based paper La Marcha. No need to translate that, except to point out that La Gloria is the village where the outbreak seems to have started. Judging from the article, Mexican authorities treat hog CAFOs with just as much if not more indulgence than their peers north of the border, to the detriment of surrounding communities and the general public health. Get this:
De acuerdo con uno de los habitantes de la comunidad, Eli Ferrer Cortés, los desechos fecales y orgánicos que produce Granjas Carroll no son tratados adecuadamente, lo que genera contaminación del agua y del viento en la region.
My rough translation: According to one community resident, the organic and fecal waste produced by Granjas Carrol isn’t adequately treated, creating water and air pollution in the region. I witnessed—and smelled—the same thing in Hardin County, Iowa, a couple of years ago, another area marked by intensive industrial hog production. The article goes on to say that area residents have long complained of “fetid odors” in the air and water, and swarms of flies hovering around waste lagoons. Like their counterparts who live in CAFO-heavy U.S. areas, they also complain of respiratory ailments. Now, with 30 percent of the area’s residents now infected with the virulent flu bug, people are demanding that state and federal authorities inspect hog operations there. So far, reports La Marcha, the response has been: nada.
The Mexico City daily La Jornada has also made the link. According to the newspaper, the Mexican health agency IMSS has acknowledged that the orginal carrier for the flu could be the “clouds of flies” that multiply in the Smithfield subsidiary’s manure lagoons.
I’ll be in touch with contacts in Mexico as this story develops —and I’ll be curious to see whether the U.S. media explores the link with Smithfield’s Mexico operation.
Note: In the original version of this post, I had called production at Granjas Carroll “nearly equal to Smithfield’s total U.S. production.” I had been confusing total production at Granjas Carroll—950,000 hogs produced in fiscal 2008—with the number of sows, or breeding pigs, kept by Smithfield in the United States. According to my source— “Concentration of Ag Markets, 2007” (PDF) by Hendrickson and Heffernan (PDF)—Smithfield keeps 1.2 million sows. Actual hog production is much larger—thus Smithfield’s total U.S. hog production is much larger than Granjas Carroll’s. I regret the error.
Comments
23 Responses to “Swine-flu outbreak linked to Smithfield Factory Farms”
Leave a Reply
Absolutely disgusting!!! Horrid conditions
and complete torture of innocent animal lives.
This company should be ashamed of itself!
[Reply]
Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN reported a few nights ago from outside the grounds of this Smithfield hog facility in Vera Cruz, saying Smithfield denied CNN investigators access to inside.
Surely the CDC has investigated this facility by now and I would suspect results of any testing done would be in by now.
Something tells me we may never know the truth.
[Reply]
Much has to do with greed, where humans making money off of factory farms don’t seem to care about the horrid pollution. Humans can live without meat. It is a fact that factory farms cattles, hogs etc produce horrid pollutants, as well as serious increase in green house gasses creating global warming. All must change, where people learn to live simpler lives, as vegetarians, with ideologies to clean up our planet, we must do this for future generations. Another issue is overpopulation, still waiting to hear from governments on this serious issue. This little planet cannot sustain 10 billion humans which could be the count in just a few more years. No sir, all must change
[Reply]
Charlene Bender Reply:
May 5th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I couldn’t have said it better myself. America needs to wake-up. People’s own greed for meat is killing them.
[Reply]
I FIND IT UNCONSEABLE THAT SO MANY PIGS ARE SLAUGHTERED IN THE FIRST PLACE. THESE ANIMALS GIVE THEIR LIVES AND ARE SMART AND CLEAN, BUT YOU HAVE NOW CAUSED AN EPEDEMIC BEYOOND COMPREHENSION. AND RIGHT NOW EGYPT IS GOING TO KILL/WASTE 300,000 PIGS! IT ISNT THEIR FAULT AT ALL AND THIS FURTHER RUINS ANY PROFITS FROM PIGS. ARE WE GOING TO HAVE TO KILL ALL OUR ANIMALS BECAUSE WE HAVE NO RESPECT FOR ANIMALS WE ABUSE AND USE FOR A MEAL? DISGUSTING AND CRUEL AND DANGEROUS AND OTHER COUNTRIES ALSO NOW LOSE OUT ON ANY PIGGY ENTERPRISE. RESPECT OUR FOOD. RESPECT OUR ANIMALS.
[Reply]
We raise animals for consumption in deplorable conditions, treat them inhumanely, strip them from everything that is natural to them and society expects to have no consequences. We need to envision a world that is free from the horrors of factory farming and expand our concept of compassion. I really wish that the meat industry didn’t have such clout with the media; there is no doubt that this multi-billion dollar industry is able to buy it’s way out of this mess. For example, the media has already changed the name of Swine Flu to something else.
[Reply]
Yet another consequence of factory farming, which hurts animals and people, as well. It’s going to be a long, painful lesson, but eventually the world is going to have to realize that treating animals with cruelty and ignoring their fear and pain will rebound and hurt those who ignore the animals’ suffering.
[Reply]
Yep, and the meat industry is trying to keep this part quiet so they don’t lose profits. The government is also telling us we don’t have to worry about eating pork, ham, bacon etc but the truth is, it’s swine flu. It looks like a pig and oinks like a pig, therefore don’t eat it.
[Reply]
Can we please respect animals? I am not a vegan or anything but respect the living. They are animals made by God and as such should be treated with respect. Good food, clean living conditions, etc, is not alot to ask.. Give them a life that you are comfortable with saying, “I made a difference while they were here”.
[Reply]
As a nurse I believe that all that I have read in the article above seems pretty much real and true.
[Reply]
Coming from an expert who tracks human infections to their animal sources, this sounds about right!
http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article996689.ece
USF professor is expert on tracking human infections to their animal sources
By John Barry, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Thursday, April 30, 2009
ST. PETERSBURG — Who’s to blame for the swine flu crisis that is scaring the whole world? May as well start with Noah. It goes that far back.
The ancient agricultural partnerships of man and animal combined with modern industrial abuses are the root causes of nearly all of today’s infectious scourges. Recognition of that fact has led to an emerging research field called conservation medicine. It combines veterinary, human and environmental sciences — disciplines that previously have not occupied the same university lab spaces.
It now covers a range of animal and environmental issues important to Florida — including diseases afflicting manatees and the susceptibility of Florida birds to the West Nile virus. The University of Florida even has researched links between malaria and fish farms in deforested parts of Peru.
One of its foremost interpreters is veterinarian Mark Walters, an associate professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He has spent his career trailing the most horrible human infectious diseases to their animal roots. He is the author of Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them. Influenza could just as well be Plague No. 7.
Walters’ search has taken him to a barn in West Sussex, England, where the first case of mad cow disease was discovered in 1984. It also has taken him to the open-air bushmeat markets of Gabon, Africa, the kinds of natural stew pots for a deadly monkey-to-human virus like HIV.
He brings to the field a peculiar blend of skills. He was an English major in Montreal; he earned a master’s in journalism at Columbia University in New York, and a D.V.M. from Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in Massachusetts. He’s 57. He and his wife, Noelle, have two children.
Walters offers a simple scenario for how the current swine flu crisis may have started. It begins in a primitive setting — a pond beside a pig farm deep in rural Mexico. The suspected ground zero is a pig farm close to a little mountain village called La Gloria, near Mexico City.
A weary migratory bird spots the pond and lights on its surface. It mingles with domesticated ducks that belong to the pig farmer. It transmits viruses to those ducks.
Pigs wallow near the pond. Eventually, the virus jumps from the ducks to a pig.
Unbeknownst to most people, pigs are flu mixing bowls. They commonly accommodate three kinds of flu viruses — bird, human and swine — often all three at the same time.
Imagine the virus from the duck mixing with human and swine viruses in one single cell in the pig’s body. Imagine the commingling of DNA. Imagine a monster virus being born.
Eventually, the new virus nests in the pig’s trachea. Anatomically, the pig’s trachea is similar to that of the pig farmer.
“Once the virus is in the pig’s trachea,” Walters says, “it’s halfway across the species bridge to man.”
What finally produces a pandemic is the virus’ unique genetic combinations — different from the kinds of seasonal flu viruses people are used to catching.
“We all have some partial protection against seasonal flu — even though 36,000 people still die from it every year,” he says.
“But when one of those novel bugs leaps from animals to people, our immune systems are completely blind-sided.”
Walters has coined a word for such health crises: “Ecodemics.”
They often spring from ancient human agricultural practices. But they can come from a modern American factory farm, too, if the farm is near a pond or if pigs are fed contaminated feed.
“All the new diseases, except Legionnaires’ (a bacteria that originates in water supplies), have that link.”
They are nurtured by environmental degradation.
From a report by the Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York:
“Climate change, chemical pollution, global trade, domestic animals, encroachment into wilderness areas and the overuse of antibiotics are some of the primary mechanisms through which humans are rapidly transforming host-parasite ecology worldwide.”
Walters says the crisis is massive and the solutions elusive. But it comes down to this:
“Sanity in the production of our food.”
[Last modified: Apr 30, 2009 09:49 AM]
[Reply]
See? Here’s just one more obvious piece of evidence that people shouldn’t be eating animals to begin with! If they weren’t still doing this grosse and horrendous habit, this would have never happened. How many more lives lost is it going to take before people’s eyes are opened to this safety fact not to mention humane fact?
[Reply]
From what I can tell, the possible link to Smithfield has not been reported in the U.S. press. Searches of Google News and the websites of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal all came up empty. The link is being made in the Mexican media, however. “Granjas Carroll, causa de epidemia en La Gloria,” declared a headline in the Vera Cruz-based paper La Marcha. No need to translate that, except to point out that La Gloria is the village where the outbreak seems to have started. Judging from the article, Mexican authorities treat hog CAFOs with just as much if not more indulgence than their peers north of the border, to the detriment of surrounding communities and the general public health. Get this:
De acuerdo con uno de los habitantes de la comunidad, Eli Ferrer Cortés, los desechos fecales y orgánicos que produce Granjas Carroll no son tratados adecuadamente, lo que genera contaminación del agua y del viento en la region.
[Reply]
Good for Mr. Philpott and his article.
The world medical community has long known the dangers of these factory-farm breeding grounds for new viruses and diseases. The fact that they haven’t said more about it– in a loud voice– to the rest of the populace, and that the news media has either been sleeping on the job or afraid to rile the big, powerful meat industries, is a disgrace.
I am sure mankind’s demise will come from a factory farm, and I fear the pandemic will be global and disastrous. Shame on anyone who understands the risks of our greedy methods of raising and slaughtering our fellow animals and does not speak up.
[Reply]
Shut Smithfield down! They are the largest contributor of pollution to our waterways. Not to mention filthy and inhumane.
Save our pigs!
Ban factory farming!
[Reply]
Major media outlets & our President need to be telling people the absolute truth about factory farms. When animals are forced to live in their own filth, & there is to much waste to safely dispose of, I would think there would be a hugh problem. And then if an animal is under that much stress how could that meat be safe to eat. I would like to know what they feed these animals too. I’m sure that to is on the up & up as well.
[Reply]
Please be more considerate of the animals and what you put into animals. And lets all be more considerate in what we do on this planet and what people eat. LETS ALL BE MORE KIND TO EACH OTHER AND THE PLANET AND NOT CAUSE OUTBRECKS AS THIS ONE. THANKS
[Reply]
Pigs are highly intelligent creatures. They were never meant to be consumed- in fact, if you read the Old Testament, you will clearly see that. God certainly knew what He was doing! People should just allow these lovable, sweet critters to live their lives as they were meant to.
[Reply]
I’m reading the PEW Commission’s report on Health and Industrial Farming: good info on affects of feeding pigs antibiotics which can lead to development of antibiotic resistant bugs such as MRSA, the flesh eating bacteria.
http://www.saveantibiotics.org/
The New York Times published two articles not long ago about the controversial link between mysterious illnesses and factory pig farms.
One New York Times article entitled Our Pigs, Our Food, Our Health appeared on March 11, 2009 in the OP-ED section written by Nicholas D. Kristof,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/opinion/12kristof.html?scp=1&sq=Our%20pigs,%20our%20food%20our%20health&st=cse
Kristof reports that a doctor in Indiana found that several of his patients came down with strange rashes, and when tested they were positive for MRSA, or staph infection resistant to antibiotics. Kristof also reports that the doctor was going to go on record regarding his suspicions about the hog farms located outside of the town where he lived, and the outbreak of MRSA. But the doctor died. Kristof concludes that a blood test suggested the doctor had a heart attack or aneurysm: the doctor had suffered at least three bouts of MRSA, a Dutch journal has linked swine-carried MRSA to dangerous human heart inflammation.
Another article entitled A Medical Mystery Unfolds in Minnesota, was Published on February 5, 2008, and written By DENISE GRADY
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05pork.html?_r=1&sq=minnesota%20meat%20packing%20plant&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all
Food for thought.
[Reply]
Excellant article, and good comments.
Factory farms supply cheep grains that can legally include genetiaclly modified grains, municiple garbage or as the USDA calls it “by-products”, decomposed animals, and candy. This factory farm practice, along with the over feeding of antibiotics are all done in the name of producting more meat, fast to meet…consumer demand(?). Did we really ever demand meat be produced in such a manne? We all need to email our legislators, family, friends, neighbors and social internet community members that we the people had no say about where our food supply would orininate and how it would be produced.
Smithfield Foods is currently purchasing slaughter houses, meat plants, transportation companies, and grociery stores (just google Kaufland) worldwide. See this link, http://www.litfood-fair.com/index.php?content=pages&lng=lt&page_id=103&news_id=1454Smithfield also has already set up operations in the UK, and eastern Europe where the populace there is informed that hormones have been banned by the EU- Europeans hang onto your hats and your healthcare cards.
I’m reading,
The PEW Commission’s report on Health and Industrial Farming: good info on affects of feeding pigs antibiotics which can lead to development of antibiotic resistant bugs such as MRSA, the flesh eating bacteria.
http://www.saveantibiotics.org/
A New York Times article entitled Our Pigs, Our Food, Our Health appeared on March 11, 2009 in the OP-ED section written by Nicholas D. Kristof,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/opinion/12kristof.html?scp=1&sq=Our%20pigs,%20our%20food%20our%20health&st=cse
Kristof reports that a doctor in Indiana found that several of his patients came down with strange rashes, and when tested they were positive for MRSA, or staph infection resistant to antibiotics. Kristof also reports that the doctor was going to go on record regarding his suspicions about the hog farms located outside of the town where he lived, and the outbreak of MRSA. But the doctor died. Kristof concludes that a blood test suggested the doctor had a heart attack or aneurysm: the doctor had suffered at least three bouts of MRSA, a Dutch journal has linked swine-carried MRSA to dangerous human heart inflammation.
A New York times entitled A Medical Mystery Unfolds in Minnesota, was Published on February 5, 2008, and written By DENISE GRADY about illesses in workers employed in a Minnesota factory farm.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05pork.html?_r=1&sq=minnesota%20meat%20packing%20plant&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all
Food for thought.
[Reply]
I have to agree with the other comments about the greed, the inhumane treatment of these poor animals, the antibiotic resistance and the stupidity of humans to incorporating pork into their diets in the first place. I will also add that I smell the same foul odor frequently when I take my morning walks in the woods, drifting in from the neighbor’s pig farm from across the gorge. As a vegetarian I have to say that no one ever complains about the smell of a soy bean field.
[Reply]
Well done to CNN for doing the ONLY report I’ve seen exploring the link between factory farms and swine flu. Is it true? And if so, WHY is no mainstream media reporting on it? I’ve contacted Sky TV, Reuters and our media in South Africa to ask them this question, and not ONE of them has replied. I don’t get it, what’s going on?
[Reply]
its all about denieing the fact that all this diseases are coming from factory farms bacuse if tehy said that people would stop eating pork and that would impact the meat industry! thats so stupid! we want it to inmact the meat industry! and did you here that they changed the name to like h1o1 virus or something instead of the swine flu because people were stoping eating pork! thats what we want to happen! factory farming is causeing it all. why do you think people have heart attacks, high cholesterol, are overweight and die! its cause of all the meat they are eating! and killing animals is just evil!
[Reply]