Via Tristero today, shocking news: some people in Big Farma the agricultural community are offended by the term "swine flu":
The North American Meat Processors Association, the National Meat Association and the American Meat Institute all issued statements asking the media to pick up on the phrase "North American flu" or other, accurate references to the hybrid A/H1N1 flu strain that is the culprit in the ongoing outbreak.
As Tristero notes, there's mighty good reason for this objection. Both the Times Online and the Guardian have filed reports, and Grist fills in some details:
Clarifying details about respiratory ailments in the Perote area of Vera Cruz State---where U.S. pork behemoth Smithfield Foods raises nearly a million hogs a year in large confinement buildings, under a subsidiary called Granjas Carroll---have emerged. In my original post on this topic, I didn't fully understand that the outbreak of a virulent respiratory condition in the town of La Gloria---located near Smithfield's farming operations---wasn't initially identified as swine flu. The disease emerged as early as February and infected 60 percent of the town's 1,800 inhabitants, according to the widely cited blog Biosurveillance, run by the U.S. disease-tracking consultancy Veratract (which claims the CDC, the World Health Organization, and the Pan-American Health Organization as clients). Three children died during the outbreak, Veratract reports. Residents blamed the Granjas Carroll confinements for the outbreak; and local authorities evidently agreed. "Health workers soon intervened, sealing off the town and spraying chemicals to kill the flies [which grew in swarms on Granjas Caroll's manure lagoons] that were reportedly swarming through people's homes" . . .There was evidently much confusion about the cause of the disease. "According to residents, the [Granjas Carroll] denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to 'flu,' "; Veratract reports. And "State health officials also implemented a vaccination campaign against influenza." However, "physicians ruled out influenza as the cause of the outbreak." Yet the symptoms experienced in La Gloria closely resemble those that would later be diagnosed as swine flu, according to several accounts. The Guardian quotes a La Gloria resident:
The symptoms were exactly like the ones they talk about now [with swine flu] .... High fevers, pain in the muscles and the joints, terrible headaches, some vomiting and diarrhoea. The illness came on very quickly and whole families were laid up.
Naturally, the pork producers claim immunity (pun intended) since, after all, it is virtually impossible to contract Smithfield Disease swine flu by eating thoroughly cooked meat. But there are other ways to spread a virus besides simple meat consumption:
Animal biosolids contain a range of pathogens that may include influenza viruses, which can persist for extended periods of time in the absence of specific treatment . . .
Do the words "Hanta virus" ring a bell? But despite the potential health hazards, animal biowastes are largely unregulated:
Apart from some use in animal feeds and aquaculture, poultry and swine wastes are almost entirely managed by land disposal. Pathogens can survive in untreated and land-disposed wastes from food animals for extended periods of time---between two and 12 months for bacteria and between three and six months for viruses.
And the problem, taken on a global scale, is . . . dare we say, pandemic?
The volume of animal wastes is significant, reflecting the considerable expansion of food animal production globally. In the U.S., it is estimated that 238,000 CAFOs produce 314 million metric tons of waste per year, which is 100 times as much biosolids produced by treating human wastewater. Global estimates suggest that 140 million metric tons of poultry litter and 460 million metric tons of swine waste were produced in 2003, based on data from the Food and Agriculture Organization.
And we have only scratched the surface here, since workers in the US have already come down with antibiotic-resistant (and potentially life-threatening) staph infections from simply handling pork products. And this disease makes garden-variety swine flu look like a bad case of sniffles:
We know that some strains of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) are extremely dangerous. Dr. Monina Klevens, of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, examined the cases of the disease reported in hospitals, schools and prisons in one year and extrapolated that "94,360 invasive MRSA infections occurred in the United States in 2005; these infections were associated with death in 18,650 cases."
At this point, I only have one observation: This shit is happening in our own backyard. So why do I need to consult a paper in the UK to get the straight story, and to the blogs of Angry Liberals™ for context?
Update: Oh, and thank you, Chuck Grassley, Midwest Moderate®, for threatening to torpedo the nomination of an administration appointee who might actually give a shit about fixing this disaster.
--Vitelius
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