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 U.S., half of which are the same ones used for humans, go to livestock -- not to cure an illness, but to squeeze out extra profit. They are given to help the livestock grow faster on cheap government-subsidized corn, which grass-eating cows are not evolved to eat, and to ward off the inevitable sicknesses that result from confining huge numbers of livestock in unhygienic conditions and feeding them massive amounts of growth hormones.

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 Indiana town Camden, which has a number of industrial pig operations. Dr. Tom Anderson had contacted him with concern that the factory farms could be the major source of the MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) related rashes or infections he was seeing. Roughly 10 percent of the population of 500 had been affected by it. A study in Iowa by epidemiologist Tara Smith revealed that 45 percent of pig farmers sampled carried MRSA, as well as 49 percent of the hogs tested. So much for "strict bio-security measures." The Center for Disease Control reports that 18,000 Americans die each year from MRSA.

The problem of toxic livestock practices endangering Hoosier health is not local, however. Diseases spread. The World Watch Institute noted in November 2007: "In Laos, according to the Barcelona-based agriculture organization GRAIN, 42 of the 45 outbreaks of avian flu in spring 2004 occurred on factory farms and 38 of them were in the capital, Vientiane. The few small farms where outbreaks occurred were located close to commercial operations. In Nigeria, the first cases of avian flu were found in one of the nation's industrial broiler operations. The virus spread from that 46,000-bird farm to 30 other factory farms in the country and then quickly to neighboring farms, forcing farmers to kill their chickens."

La Gloria in Veracruz Mexico, where the first patient of the swine flu emerged, a young boy, is home to a Smithfield Foods mega-pig operation, Granjas Carroll. More than 950,000 hogs are slaughtered per year, in confinement facilities located near confined chicken operations as well. Smithfield had been fined many millions of dollars for its toxic waste in Virginia and violation of the Clean Water Act. But when NAFTA began in 1994, it opened the doors to unregulated toxic waste possibilities in Mexico. Smithfield scuttled through, opening its "Carroll ranches" in Veracruz.

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 University of Notre Dame. He lives in South Bend.