home » More excellent Smithfield-H1N1 coverage

More excellent Smithfield-H1N1 coverage

by Paula | 29 April 2009 | permalink | comments [1]
Tags: food, disease
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Fantastic, well-cited coverage of the Smithfield-H1N1 link from grain.org, website of the organization GRAIN which describes itself thus: “GRAIN is an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people’s control over genetic resources and local knowledge.”

From A food system that kills: Swine flu is meat industry’s latest plague:

Experts have been warning for years that the rise of large-scale factory farms in North America has created the perfect breeding grounds for the emergence and spread of new highly-virulent strains of influenza. “Because concentrated animal feeding operations tend to concentrate large numbers of animals close together, they facilitate rapid transmission and mixing of viruses,” said scientists from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2006. Three years earlier, Science Magazine warned that swine flu was on a new evolutionary “fast track” due to the increasing size of factory farms and the widespread use of vaccines in these operations. It’s the same story with bird flu. The crowded and unsanitary conditions of the farms make it possible for the virus to recombine and take on new forms very easily. Once this happens, the centralised nature of the industry ensures that the disease gets carried far and wide, whether by feces, feed, water or even the boots of workers. Yet, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “no formal national surveillance system exists to determine what viruses are prevalent in the US swine population.” The same is true of Mexico.

. . .

After countless efforts by the community to get the authorities to help — efforts which led to the arrest of several community leaders and death threats against people speaking out against the Smithfield operations — local health officials finally decided to investigate in late 2008. Tests revealed that more than 60 per cent of the community of 3,000 people were infected by a respiratory disease, but officials did not confirm what the disease was.

. . .

While it has not been widely reported, the region around the community of La Gloria is also home to many large poultry farms. Recently, in September 2008, there was an outbreak of bird flu among poultry in the region. At the time, veterinary authorities assured the public that it was only a local incidence of a low-pathogenic strain affecting backyard birds. But we now know, thanks to a disclosure made by Marco Antonio Núñez López, the President of the Environmental Commission of the State of Veracruz, that there was also an avian flu outbreak on a factory farm about 50 kilometres from La Gloria owned by Mexico’s largest poultry company, Granjas Bachoco, that was not revealed because of fears of what it might mean for Mexico’s export markets. It should be noted that a common ingredient in industrial animal feed is “poultry litter”, which is a mixture of everything found on the floor of factory poultry farms: fecal matter, feathers, bedding, etc

. . .

It is not the first time and it will not be the last time that corporate farms conceal disease outbreaks and put people’s lives at risk. It is the nature of their business. A couple of years ago in Romania, Smithfield refused to let local authorities enter its pig farms after residents complained of the stench coming from hundreds of dead corpses of pigs left rotting for days at the farms. “Our doctors have not had access to the American [company’s] farms to effect routine inspections,” said Csaba Daroczi, assistant director at the Timisoara Hygiene and Veterinary Authority. “Every time they tried, they were pushed away by the guards. Smithfield proposed that we sign an agreement that would oblige us to warn them three days before each inspection.” Eventually, it emerged that Smithfield had been concealing a major outbreak of classical swine fever on its Romanian farms.

In Indonesia, where people are still dying from bird flu and where many health experts believe the next pandemic virus will emerge, authorities can still not enter large corporate farms without the permission of the company. In Mexico, authorities deflected calls to investigate La Granja Carroll and accused the residents of La Gloria of spreading infection because “they use home remedies instead of going to the health centres to cure their flu.”

Note that all bolding is mine, and that the original article is extensively footnoted, which I deleted here for the sake of readability. I encourage you to go read the full Grain.org report, including its footnotes.

comments

1. I thank you for covering this story, as so many sites do not.

   I have written an article about this subject, which can be read here- http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pandemic-or-Pig-Farm-Fiasc-by-Colleen-De-Koning-090428-311.html#comment211457

   There are a lot of unanswered questions about this supposedly ‘new’ virus.

   c

   — Colleen De Koning · 30 April 2009, 18:45 · #

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