Fwd: [The_Brotherhood_of_Pagans] Swine-flu outbreak could be linked to Smithfield factory farms

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Leila <hineni

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:27:12 -0500

[The_Brotherhood_of_Pagans] Swine-flu outbreak could be

linked to Smithfield factory farms

To:

 

Swine-flu outbreak could be linked to Smithfield factory farms

a.. One flu east, one flu westThe outbreak of a new flu strain-a

nasty mash-up of swine, avian, and human viruses-has infected 1,000

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 Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year,

according to the company Web site.

 

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-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.

 

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a

sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge

Mountains of North Carolina.

 

 

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/#comments

 

 

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