SARS: Another Deadly Virus From the Meat Industry

[Guest guest]

SARS: Another Deadly Virus From the Meat Industry

by Michael Greger, M.D.

13 April 2003

 

Animal agriculture is not just a public health hazard for those that

consume meat. In fact, the single worst epidemic in recorded

world history, the 1918 influenza pandemic, has been blamed on

the livestock industry.(1)

 

In that case, the unnatural density and proximity of ducks and

pigs raised for slaughter probably led to the deaths of 20 to 40

million people across the world.(2) Since then, the raising of

pigs and poultry has resulted in millions more human deaths

from the 1957-58 Asian flu, the 1968-69 Hongkong flu and the

1977 swine flu.(3) All of these influenza strains seem to have

arisen in the same region of southern China where intensive

systems of animal agriculture have become a breeding ground

for new killer viruses.(4)

 

For centuries, the Guangdong province of China has had the

world's largest concentration of humans, pigs and fowl living in

close proximity.(5) In this environment, pigs can become

co-infected with both human and avian (bird) strains of influenza.

When this happens, a deadly gene swapping can take place, in

which the lethality of viral strains rampant in the Chinese poultry

industry.(6) can combine which the human transmissibility of the

human strains to create new mutated flu viruses capable of

infecting and killing people on a global scale.(7)

 

Other viral threats besides influenza have also escaped from

Southeast Asian livestock operations. In 1999, a new virus, now

known as the Nipah virus, jumped from pigs to humans in

Malaysia, infecting pig breeders and killing about a hundred

people before it was stamped out.(8) In Southern Chinese

province of Guangdong, battery chickens are sometimes kept

directly above pig pens, depositing their waste right into the pigs'

food troughs.(9) It may come no surprise, then, that Guangdong

is thought to have been ground zero for the deadly SARS virus as

well.(10) The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus

is just the latest in a string of human tragedies traced back to our

appetite for animal flesh.

 

According to the World Health Organization, SARS, which has

already infected thousands worldwide, could become the " first

severe new disease of the 21st century with global epidemic

potential. " (11) And experts are again blaming intensive animal

agriculture.(12,13,14,15) According to China's equivalent of the

Centres for Disease Control, the first people to succumb to the

SARS virus were bird vendors and chefs, who had been in close

and continued contact with chickens, ducks and other birds.(16)

 

Scientists have identified SARS as a coronavirus, a class of

viruses well known to the livestock industry.(17) Coronaviruses

are found in many feedlot cattle who die of pneumonia and are

responsible for the respiratory disease known as shipping fever

in cattle stressed by transport.(18) There's currently a new

mutant strain of coronavirus causing outbreaks of a contagious

pneumonia on pig farms in several countries.(19) Preliminary

work, though, suggests the SARS virus is more related to the

one that causes lung infections in chickens.(20)

 

The concentration of animals with the weakened immune

systems in unsanitary conditions seems inherent to factory

farming. As intensive livestock operations continue to spread

worldwide, so will viral breeding grounds.(21) Moving away from

intensive animal agriculture and towards more sustainable

plant-based methods of production may benefit the health of the

planet and its inhabitants in more ways than we know.

 

(1) Daily GC, Ehrlich PR. Development, Global Change, and the

Epidemiological Environment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University;

1995. Paper #0062.

(2) Kiple KF, editor. The Cambridge World History of Human

Disease. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1993.

(3) The Straits Times (Singapore), March 21, 2003.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Time, April 7, 2003.

(6) The Straits Times (Singapore), March 21, 2003.

(7) Courier Mail (Australia) ,April 12, 2003.

(8) South China Morning Post, April 9, 2003.

(9) Sydney Morning Herald, April 7, 2003

(10) Time, April 7, 2003.

(11) The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, April 12, 2003.

(12) TB & Outbreaks Week, April 15, 2003.

(13) The Toronto Sun, March 28, 2003.

(14) New Scientist, April 03, 2003.

(15) Courier Mail (Australia), April 12, 2003.

(16) The Michigan Daily, April 09, 2003.

(17) New England Journal of Medicine, April 10, 2003.

(18) Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico), April 6, 2003.

(19) Ibid.

(20) New Scientist, April 03, 2003.

(21) Time, April 7, 2003.

 

 

--

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence

encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

--Elie Wiesel