in sickness and in health

So, how about that swine flu, huh? Its speed is almost breathtaking. Flu—whether a pandemic or not—tends to spread fairly quickly, but this is almost ridiculous. A week ago this topic didn’t even exist among the general public and now? It has supplanted the crippling recession at the top of news hours. Not too shabby, swine flu!

Being familiar with animal protection issues, I know that pig flu is a direct result of deplorable factory farming conditions. Now, I’m not trying to be a Preachy McPreacherson here; I’m just interested in stating the facts and pointing out that factory farms have implications not just for the animals who suffer, but for human populations as well.

Long story short—and I thank The Humane Society of the United States for sharing their concise and succinct overview of the matter—an H1N1 flu virus has circulated in pig populations ever since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 (the year my grandfather was born; holla, Papa!). In 1998 thousands of pigs fell ill with the aggressive H3N2 virus in a North Carolina factory farm. North Carolina is home to the nation’s largest pig farm and has more than twice as many corporate pig mega-factory farms than any other state. As its pig population exploded, its number of pig farms as shrunk. More pigs in less space: it’s really no surprise that the virus began there.

Anyway, researchers discovered that the virus was actually a “triple reassortment,” a heretofore unseen hybrid of three viruses: human, pig, and bird. How can a Frankenstein’s monster-esque virus like this even evolve? Well, on many factory farms pigs and poultry are raised in adjacent buildings, with the same employees tending to both of them, creating cross-contamination. And because pigs are often dragged across the U.S., from one factory farm to another for breeding, fattening, and slaughtering, the 1998 virus was able to spread to Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.

The pig virus currently making the world break into a cold sweat is a “quadruple reassortment” containing human and bird viruses and European and North American pig viruses. Pig flu is very tightly entwined with pig density, and given the massive concentrations of farm animals in North American and European factory farms—concentrations that allow viruses to jump and reassort between species at an unprecedented rate—it’s clear why a pandemic is a distinct possibility.

Recognizing this, the European Commission’s agricultural directorate previously warned that Europe’s blossoming factory farm industries will give rise to “an increasing risk of disease epidemics.” Denmark actually listened; they lowered the number of pigs allowed on each Danish farm and in Denmark as a whole. The U.S., needless to say, hasn’t followed suit.

It isn’t just the dense concentration of animals in factory farms that set the flu wheels in motion. Pigs spending their entire lives in narrow, movement-restricting crates with bare concrete floors produce lower antibody levels, making illness more virulent. Unfortunately, factory farms try to combat potential disease risk by pumping the animals full of antibiotics—a move which creates its own brand of problems (namely, drug-resistant strains of human diseases). A better solution would be for them to prevent disease not through needless drug dispersion but through humane farming practices. Humane farms breed happy animals and happy animals have stronger immune systems. Ah, but I guess there’s no money in that. We’ve gotta have our cheap McDonald’s hamburgers, after all.

We’re potentially looking at a major turning point here, one with historical implications. This disease is a pivot on which we could swing in any number of directions; for example, a fizzling false alarm, a catastrophic pandemic leading to mass deaths, or a pandemic not leading to mass deaths (this could still be considered catastrophic in that our already shattered economy would be further weakened by masses of employees staying home sick, not to mention the fact that during a pandemic, people won’t exactly feel like stimulating the economy by going shopping, going to the movies, buying new homes, etc).

Here’s how I visualize the present situation: it’s like one of those movie/TV scenes where a character makes an all-important hoop shot during The Big Game, and as the ball arcs toward the net, everything grinds into slow motion. Hushed, rigid, open-mouthed, the crowd is immobilized, transfixed. The ball hums lazily around the net’s rim. And we wait.


song heard most recently before posting:
Make You Feel My Love—Adele