From “Swine CAFOs and Novel H1N1 Flu: Separating Facts from Fears” comes this quote:

one potential source of the original outbreak—swine farming in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—has received comparatively little attention by public health officials. CAFOs house animals by the thousands in crowded indoor facilities. But the same economy-of-scale efficiencies that allow CAFOs to produce affordable meat for so many consumers also facilitate the mutation of viral pathogens into novel strains that can be passed on to farm workers and veterinarians, according to Gregory Gray, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Iowa College of Public Health.

“When respiratory viruses get into these confinement facilities, they have continual opportunity to replicate, mutate, reassort, and recombine into novel strains,” Gray explains. “The best surrogates we can find in the human population are prisons, military bases, ships, or schools. But respiratory viruses can run quickly through these [human] populations and then burn out, whereas in CAFOs—which often have continual introductions of [unexposed] animals—there’s a much greater potential for the viruses to spread and become endemic.”

More bits from the article, emphasis added:

• “workers exposed routinely to livestock can pass these zoonotic infections—which transmit readily among humans and animals—on to the wider public.”
• “Scientists can’t conclusively say if humans first infected pigs with the H1N1 virus or vice versa, Richt says. But what is clear, he adds, is that pigs have been a reservoir for the virus ever since.”
• “Swine CAFOs generate vast amounts of fecal waste, stored in onsite lagoons that can breach and pollute local watersheds during heavy rains. The facilities emit a piercing odor that can be detected up to 6 miles from its source”
• “OSHA typically exempts facilities with fewer than 11 employees from routine inspection unless otherwise requested by employees or other agencies. Yet, like many other modern production facilities, CAFOs are largely automated, so a typical factory farm housing 2,000 sows requires a crew of just 7 people“
• “If we find a high prevalence of viral infection with a given strain in January, why do we see it again the next January if the pigs live only six months before slaughter? We need to study the pigs, the workers, and the environment to understand how the viruses get around, and what sort of interventions we can take to limit transmission.”
• “Untreated hog wastes are also routinely sprayed on crop fields as fertilizer.”
• “research is biased to generate more industry profit.”
• “this much is clear: the current pandemic shows that viruses of animal origin can pose a substantial human health threat. And if CAFOs were to accelerate the evolution of these viruses, Gray says, then the public has a right to know how those viruses evolve and what steps can be taken to limit their spread. ‘If we find something new,’ he says, ‘we need to heighten surveillance to track it—not sit on it and pretend nothing’s happening until the problem explodes.’”

Sections: Vegan News
Topics: bacon, CAFO, concentrated animal feeding operations, disease, factory farm, flu, H1N1, ham, illness, pigs, pork, sick, swine, swine flu, Vegan