'Symptom: swine flu. Diagnosis: industrial agriculture?' From the blogger who first made the conne

[ProgressiveEconomist]

From the blogger who first made the connection between CAFOs and Ground Zero for H1N1

What's YOUR opinion?

From http://gristmill.grist.org/article/2009-04-28-more-smithfield-swine/

Posted 10:09 AM on 28 Apr 2009 by Tom Philpott

Several days after news broke of a possible link between Mexico-based hog CAFOs and the rapid spread of a novel swine-flu strain, what have we learned?

• 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, ... --have emerged. ... 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 that were reportedly swarming through people’s homes, according to a Monday account in the Guardian. ... The symptoms were exactly like the ones they talk about now .... 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.

• In a statement issued late Sunday, Smithfield said it had "found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in the company's swine herd or its employees at its joint ventures in Mexico." The wording is interesting here--"no signs or symptoms," but no information about actual testing of pigs for flu strains. ... It's important to note as well that non-symptomatic pigs can carry flu. Here is a line from the World Health Organization's recently posted FAQ on swine flu: "The virus is spread among pigs by aerosols, direct and indirect contact, and asymptomatic carrier pigs" (emphasis mine).

• Citizens of La Gloria, as well as some Mexican public-health workers, have pointed to flies congregating on manure piles as a possible vector for the flu, as I reported in my earlier post. Several commenters dismissed that possibility, denying that flies can carry flu viruses. From what I can tell, those folks are wrong. I recently got my hands on a paper by an international team of scientists--including Jay Graham and Ellen Silbergeld of Johns Hopkins--published in the May-June 2008 Public Health Reports. The paper, "The Animal-Human Interface and Infectious Disease in Industrial Food Animal Production: Rethinking Biosecurity and Biocontainment" (PDF), points to a concrete example of flies acting as a flu vector: esearch conducted during an HPAI outbreak in Kyoto, Japan, in 2004 found that flies caught in proximity to broiler facilities where the outbreak took place carried the same strains of H5N1 influenza virus as found in chickens of an infected poultry farm. The public-health scientific community has been sounding the alarm for years about the potential for bio-catastrophe brewing on industrial animal farms. The Graham/Sibergeld paper crystallizes those concerns. I'll tease out a few key themes. Untreated manure in lagoons, pointed to by La Gloria residents as a health hazard, can indeed contain flu strains. 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. 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. The amount of untreated waste allowed to fester in CAFOs globally is stunning.

For more background on confinement operations, see my 2007 special report "Sow what? On food and farming."

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."

[Gman]

1. Industrial agriculture does not explain the 1976 outbreak

of the same or genetically very similar virus.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

2. What 1976 outbreak? Do you have a link?

[pnwmom]

3. Just google it. There was a swine flu outbreak in 1976, and that originated

in poor parts of Asia, where the problem was said to be that people lived too closely with their farm animals -- which is the opposite of what is being suggested now.

In 1976 millions of Americans were lining up for weeks for the vaccine, until it was decided that the potential side effects of the vaccine (a serious form of paralysis) were worse than that particular flu.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

4. I see. But not every flu mutation outbreak has to spread by

the same vector, does it? Over-contact between humand and food animals may have been the culprit in 1976, but couldn't negligent treatment of animal manure be the culprit in 2009?

One thing I wonder about is whether virus mutations may take place inside manure lagoons, independently of what't happening inside the animals that were the source of the manure. Presumably, manure logoons are a soup of live viruses, live bacteria, and traces of the tens of thousands of courses of pharmaceuticals routinely given to food animals in industrial farming. To me, manure lagoons sound like giant Petri dishes where viruses and bacteria could mutate into drug-resistant forms.

[glitch]

6. That is a very interesting point.

"One thing I wonder about is whether virus mutations may take place inside manure lagoons, independently of what't happening inside the animals that were the source of the manure. Presumably, manure logoons are a soup of live viruses, live bacteria, and traces of the tens of thousands of courses of pharmaceuticals routinely given to food animals in industrial farming. To me, manure lagoons sound like giant Petri dishes where viruses and bacteria could mutate into drug-resistant forms."

I hope their testing includes samples from the lagoons.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

7. Yes, let's not ignore the role mass administration of pharmaceuticals

may be playing in mutations of viruses and bacteria. Everything that a human or an animal ingests and does not absorb 100 percent of eventually finds its way into a body of water.

Even into reservoirs of human drinking water. The Associated Press recently ran an alarming series of articles about traces of popular pharmaceuticals in many reservoirs, and about how water treatment almost universally ignores these dangerous pollutants. See http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/pharmawater_site/day1_02.html .

Just think of all the billions of advertising dollars spent by the pharma industry to encourage needless ingestion of billions of doses of drugs by humans and by food animals, needless drug doses that may be polluting our water supples FOREVER.

[glitch]

9. Don't get me started on pharmaceuticals.

Not to mention the corruption of our food, soil and water stocks by the agriculture industry. We've got a very, very, very sick system, pandemics (or threats of pandemics) are just one of the symptoms.

[havocmom]

5. Yes, there was swine flu in 1976, and Michele Bachmann should have googled it too

She would have found out flu hits during GOP administrations too.

[truedelphi]

16. The structure of the syllogistic argument that they are creating is invalid

So you do not need to be worrying about even arguing the point with them.

[truedelphi]

14. The syllogism you have created to argue this point is

Invalid so please stop.

[Overseas]

8. K&R to consider the impact of industrial farming on public health. //nt

[AngryOldDem]

10. Factory farms are a scourge.

For humans and animals alike. And I'm really surprised that there haven't been more outbreaks of disease that could be traced back to them.

The descriptions of how they run -- as well as the effects on their neighbors -- are not for the weak-stomached.

[Overseas]

12. They sure seem to be. Certainly need better waste management

and if that makes pork cost more, so be it.

It is awful that in order to serve up cheap pork, we impose such great costs on the communities around the farms, let alone the problems that spill over to the country at large.

We've done so much industrialization via quick & dirty methods. So we could sell things cheaply. As long as the costs could be shoved aside for future generations to deal with.

[Junkdrawer]

11. Two Good Articles to Read...

Chasing the Fickle Swine Flu

...

One of the first signs of trouble was a barking cough that resounded through a North Carolina farm in August 1998. Every pig in an operation of 2400 animals sickened, with symptoms similar to those caused by the human flu: high fever, poor appetite, and lethargy. Pregnant sows were hit hardest, and almost 10% aborted their litters, says veterinary virologist Gene Erickson of the Rollins Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Raleigh. Many piglets that survived in utero were later born small and weak, and some 50 sows died.

The culprit, a new strain of swine influenza to which the animals had little immunity, left veterinarians and virologists alike puzzled. Although related flu strains in birds, humans, and pigs outside North America constantly evolve, only one influenza subtype had sickened North American pigs since 1930. That spell was suddenly broken about 4 years ago, and a quick succession of new flu viruses has been sweeping through North America’s 100 million pigs ever since. This winter, for example, up to 15% of the 4- to 7-week-old piglets on a large Minnesota farm died, even though their mothers had been vaccinated against swine flu, says veterinary pathologist Kurt Rossow of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

It seems that after years of stability, the North American swine flu virus has jumped onto an evolutionary fast track, churning out variants every year. Changes in animal husbandry, including increased vaccination, may be spurring this evolutionary surge. And researchers say that the resulting slew of dramatically different swine flu viruses could spell danger for humans, too. The evolving swine flu “increases the likelihood that a novel virus will arise that is transmissible among humans,” says Richard Webby, a molecular virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

...

http://birdflubook.com/resources/WUETHRICH1502.pdf


CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in North Carolina.

...

The worst plague in human history was triggered by an H1N1 avian flu virus, which jumped the species barrier from birds to humans and went on to kill as many as 50 to 100 million people in the 1918 flu pandemic. No disease, war or famine ever killed so many people in so short a time. We then passed the virus to pigs, where it has continued to circulate, becoming one of the most common causes of respiratory disease on North American pig farms.

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell ill. A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple reassortment virus—a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus—that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.

Within months, the virus had spread throughout the United States. Blood samples taken from 4,382 pigs across 23 states found that 20.5% tested positive for exposure to this triple hybrid swine flu virus by early 1999, including 100% of herds tested in Illinois and Iowa, and 90% in Kansas and Oklahoma. According to the current analysis, it is from this pool of viruses that the current swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic material.

Tracing the Origins of Today's Virus

Since the progenitor of the swine flu virus currently threatening to trigger a human pandemic has now been identified, it is critical to explore what led to its original emergence and spread. Scientists postulate that a human flu virus may have starting circulating in U.S. pig farms as early as 1995, but "by mutation or simply by obtaining a critical density, caused disease in pigs and began to spread rapidly through swine herds in North America." It is therefore likely no coincidence that the virus emerged in North Carolina, the home of the nation’s largest pig production operation. North Carolina has the densest pig population in North America and reportedly boasts more than twice as many corporate pig mega-factories as any other state.

...

http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/swine_flu_virus_origin_1998_042909.html

[ProgressiveEconomist]

13. Oops! smithfield CEO 'Larry Poop'? (not Pope) was just introduced

by Erin Burnett on CNBC, a few minutes after 2 pm Friday May 1st.

[Occam Bandage]

15. Speculation's easy. I'll pay attention when there's some research. nt

[bvar22]

17. Research begins with speculation.

Without speculation, there would be no framework for research.

[BreakForNews]

18. Mexican Government Lying About Swine Flu

Yeah, that was a timely article by Tom Philpott.
Here's an interview with him about his take on Swine Flu:

http://breakfornews.com/audio/BeautifulTruth090428a.mp3

I haven't seen any critical analysis of the statement by Mexican officials about Edgar Hernandez Hernandez, the Mexican boy whose flu test results came back positive for the new Swine Flu variant. Here's the problem:

Cover-Up:
Mexican Government
Lying About Swine Flu

by Fintan Dunne, BreakForNews.com, 29th April, 2009, 07:00 EST

Amid a growing international focus on a suspicious mass flu outbreak around intensive pig production facilities in Mexico, government officials there have resorted to lying about the type of flu which struck hundreds of locals.

At a press conference on Monday, Mexican Health Minister José Ángel Córdova assured the media that a flu outbreak in the town of La Gloria was not Swine Flu, but an already-known and different flu strain. The town is set among 72 industrial pig production facilities part-owned by the multinational Smithfield Foods,

He said that of 35 mucous samples taken from flu victims, only one sample matched the Swine Flu strain which is causing international concern. That sample was taken from Edgar Hernandez Hernandez, a 4-year-old local boy who fell ill and has now recovered.

Local Veracruz governor Fidel Herrera echoed his Health Minister's comments on Tuesday, stating that: "there is not a single indicator" to suggest La Gloria was the epicenter of Mexico's Swine Flu outbreak.

The government position is that barring this single boy, the rest of the samples indicate locals fell foul of the known flu strain H2N3, not the new variant A/H1N1 strain.

AGAINST THE ODDS

But there is a serious flaw in the Mexican government's public position. After hundreds of mucous samples had been collected from flu victims across Mexico, health officials took a small subset of those samples and in mid-April sent them out of Mexico to US laboratories for further scientific analysis. Of the 35 samples they had secured from the inhabitants of La Gloria, only one sample was included in that smaller subset sent to the US. That sample was the one taken from 4-year-old Edgar Hernandez Hernandez.

So the Mexican Government wants us to believe that by sheer chance they happened to pick the only A/H1N1 sample in La Gloria, and that the other 34 samples still in the custody of Mexican health authorities are the known H2N3 strain!

A trivial calculation show that the odds of that serendipitous sample selection are 35 to 1.

Those odds against the Mexican government increase when we consider that residents of La Gloria say that they had symptoms which were identical to those reported by Swine Flu victims across Mexico.....

READ ON: http://breakfornews.com/Mexican-Government-Lying-About-Swine-Flu.htm

[ProgressiveEconomist]

19. Great find! Thanks for posting. When will this get covered by mainstream media?

All I've seen on cable is corporate propaganda.