Swine Flu: It's what's for dinner

The recent outbreak of influenza A subtype H1N1, commonly referred to as swine flu, has elicited an array of responses both panicked and measured. As a chef and restaurant owner who serves more than his fair share of pork and pork based dishes, I can tell you with a great degree of certainty that coming in contact with raw pork as well as consuming cooked pork will not infect one with the H1N1 virus.
What are we to assume, then, when it is reported that the World Health Organization is investigating the possible link between factory hog farms in Perote, Mexico and the onset of the swine flu pandemic? At this point, the answer is not much. While the residents of Perote believe that the farms, which are operated by a subsidy of Smithfield Foods of North Carolina (Granjas Carrol), have polluted the air and water of their town leading to the synthesis of the pathogen responsible for H1N1, their assertions have yet to be substantiated by scientific data. What is known is that none of the pigs tested positive for the virus. On the other hand, preliminary investigations have indicated that possibility exists that the disease vector may be a fly that reproduces in pig waste and that is found swarming in great numbers throughout homes and public spaces in the general vicinity of the farms. In addition, the residents of Perote have recently suffered en masse from severe respiratory ailments, and the first documented case of H1N1 has been traced to Perote.
All of that said, there remains no definitive link between the Granjas Carrol concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO's) and the onset of the outbreak. It does, however, suggest that not all is well in the world of factory farming and the communities within which they are located. As an example, over the last few years we have seen an increase in and sometimes the advent of avian flu, West Nile virus, bluetongue, foot and mouth disease and the ever present bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) better known as mad cow disease.
The spread of these diseases and, in some cases, the actual syntheses of them can be traced in large part to the farming methods employed by CAFO's. In the case of BSE, herbivores were fed commercial feeds that included large amounts of protein derived from the meat and bone meal remains of other cattle. Some of these cattle remains were infected with BSE, but due to the long incubation period for the disease of up to five years went largely undetected until it was too late. In turn, human beings who consumed the brains or spinal cords of these animals became infected with same form of degenerative nerve disease.
While these diseases remain a grave threat to the public health, their impact on it is far less threatening than the myriad of other ills that are the result of industrial agriculture. Over the past seventy years, food production in much of the world has been transformed from traditional small scale farming to vertically integrated industrial scale operations where most aspects of production are controlled by a single entity. Think Smithfield Foods. The results have been the degradation of the environment, the reduction of our food's nutritional value and an increase in the onset of increasingly virulent pathogens.
In his December, 2006, Rolling Stone exposé entitled "Boss Hog", Jeff Tietz reported that it is estimated that Smithfield's total waste discharge was 26 million tons a year. Smithfield's pigs are raised in CAFO's. The sows are artificially inseminated in cages that are so small that they cannot turn around. The males are held in such close confinement that they often trample each other to death. There is no contact with the outside world. Instead, the floors are slatted to allow the excrement to drop through to a catchments pit. What also falls through is anything large enough to pass through the slats. That includes afterbirths, stillborn piglets and antibiotic syringes among a myriad of other vile contaminants. When the pits are full, a pipeline is opened so that the excrement can be transferred to a large holding lagoon. Here's where it gets tricky. Some of those lagoons are lined with polyethylene liners that can rip or be torn by fragments of bone or other sharp objects. Once that happens, the excrement seeps under the liner and contaminates the groundwater. Each gram of hog excrement can contain as much as 100 million fecal coli-form bacteria.
The fun doesn't stop there. Many people living downwind from CAFO's suffer from respiratory ailments due to inhaling any number of poisonous gasses associated with these operations. These gasses include, ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide and phosphorous. In 1992 right here in Minnesota, a worker making repairs to a lagoon began to suffocate from these fumes. Another worker dove in to save him. They both choked to death.
A couple of years back, I was engaged on the very pages of this newspaper in a spirited exchange with former state epidemiologist Dr Michael Osterholm concerning the perils present in our current food system. Osterholm turned the debate into a discussion about food irradiation. While I understand the basic technology, I am not qualified to comment on the safety, cost effectiveness or the purported benefits of irradiation. What I can comment on is basic common sense. I don't have to be a microbiologist to know that a beef cow standing in a grassy pasture is cleaner than one standing ankle deep in filth. I also don't need to be a scientist to understand that producing food in an environment that disregards for the most part both human and animal safety and utilizes methods that create situations that are ripe for the transmutation and transmission of virulent pathogens is an unwise and unsafe practice. My point is simple. Why do we continually create problems for ourselves and then proceed to spend millions of dollars and waste countless lives trying to eradicate those problems through the creation of new technologies? Somebody's getting rich, and it's not you and me.
Now it is being reported that current Secretary of Agriculture and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack is considering Osterholm for appointment as the undersecretary of food safety. I shudder to think where this might lead. As someone who has significant ties to major pharmaceutical companies as well someone who was involved intimately in the development of irradiation technology, I find it hard to believe that Osterholm will be in any way sympathetic to examining how to eliminate the source of these problems rather than finding ways to treat them.
As a strong supporter of a free market economy, I have always felt that we as consumers have the power to dictate to business how we wish to be served. If we demand more wholesome and environmentally friendly food, then the producers of our food will give it to us. If we allow for our environment and the health of our planet to be defiled in the name of profit, then that is what we will get. I am not asking for our elected and appointed officials to legislate and regulate these things. All I am asking is that when they author a piece of legislation; or when they make an appointment; or when they push forward a policy decision, that they do so with the intention of helping to create a better world. Is that too much to ask?