South Bend Tribune
Article published Aug
27, 2009
Recent op-ed on H1N1 flu leaves public ill-informed
By EUGENE HALTON
In their op-ed titled "Know the Facts about H1N1
Flu" (Viewpoint, Aug. 14), Indiana state health commissioner Dr. Judy
Monroe and Indiana state veterinarian Dr. Bret D. Marsh state as fact that
"modern livestock facilities have strict bio-security measures in place to
protect animals from getting sick or spreading disease," and that
antibiotics given to animals improve public health. These are two of the many
examples of disinformation given in this piece. American meat-producing
operations are typically large factory confined animal feeding operations
designed to provide maximum profit to their agribusiness profiteers at the
expense of American health.
The plain facts are that 70 percent of all the antibiotics used in the
No terrorist could match American breeding grounds for creating drug-resistant
bacteria found on American large industrial feeding operations, still quaintly
called "farms." When you put 40,000 or 60,000 cattle in tight spaces,
up to their knees in their own manure, pump them with growth hormones and
antibiotics so you can slaughter them at 14 months instead of the traditional
two to four years, you have the perfect spawning ground for drug-resistant
bacteria, such as the deadly E. coli 0157:H7.
Combine that with sped-up, profit-increasing slaughtering practices that
increase the amount of manure that gets on meat, and you reap the numerous meat
recalls and increased general food poisonings that kill 5,000 Americans
annually. The spinach scandal of 2006 involved E. coli 0157:H7, transmitted
from the cattle ranch upstream from Earthbound Farms.Nicholas
Kristoff of the New York Times wrote in March on the
The problem of toxic livestock practices endangering Hoosier health is not
local, however. Diseases spread. The World Watch Institute noted in November
2007: "In
La Gloria in
Complaints about breathing problems in the local population emerged this past
winter in the local newspapers, which blamed Smithfield Foods, and two children
died in February from "acute respiratory illness." Smithfield claims
none of its workers or the pigs it chose to sample had the flu, but its toxification of the landscape there, as well as CAFO
operations in the U.S., has created ideal conditions for this or the next
blight to emerge. The Wall Street catastrophe due to deregulation and greed for
excessive profit is only one of the emerging deregulation catastrophes.
"NAFTA Flu," as geographer Robert Wallace calls it, is perhaps a
better name for the H1N1 virus, because it reveals the ugly secret: that greed
to maximize profit through unregulated toxic agribusiness practices poses the
gravest threat to American health.One article
detailing the dangers can be found on the National Institute of Health Web
site: "The Potential Role of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in
Infectious Disease Epidemics and Antibiotic Resistance" (Mary J Gilchrist
et al., 2007, www.pubmedcentral. nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?
artid=1817683).
The meat complex is a far more serious threat to homeland security than any
terrorist could be. Agribusiness has repeatedly sought the most advanced human
antibiotics, while using lackeys to claim that this poses no human health risk.
Should NAFTA flu strike hard this winter, remember that Dr. Judy Monroe and Dr.
Bret D. Marsh have provided you disinformation that will assure that big
industry gets its excess profits at the expense of your health.
Eugene Halton is professor of sociology at the