Mother Nature has the last word...
http://www.truthout.org/topstories/10910vh3
Factory Farmed Meat Can Trigger a Global Pandemic That Wipes Out Sixty
Percent of Those Infected
Saturday 09 January 2010
by: Kathy Freston | AlterNet
The chicken and pork industries have wrought unprecedented changes in
bird and swine flu. Billions could die in a deadly flu pandemic, the
likes of which we have never seen.
I was intrigued (and disturbed) by a book I just read online by Michael
Greger, M.D. about the potential of a deadly flu pandemic, the likes of
which we have never seen. Greger very clearly delineates how a virus
begins, mutates, and becomes dangerous. As with so many problems we are
seeing lately -- environmental or health -- factory farmed meat seems to
be a big part of the cause. A graduate of the Cornell University School
of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine, Michael
Greger, M.D., serves as Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture
at The Humane Society of the United States. An internationally
recognized lecturer, he has presented at the Conference on World
Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Bird
Flu Summit, testified before Congress, and was an expert witness in
defense of Oprah Winfrey at the infamous "meat defamation" trial. His
recent scientific publications in American Journal of Preventive
Medicine, Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, Critical Reviews in
Microbiology, and the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition,
and Public Health explore the public health implications of
industrialized animal agriculture.
Kathy Freston: How likely are we to have a bird or swine flu that turns
into something really deadly and widespread?
Michael Greger: Unfortunately we don't know enough about the biology of
these viruses to make accurate predictions, but influenza is definitely
the disease to keep an eye on. AIDS has killed millions but is only
fluid-borne. Malaria has killed millions but is relatively restricted to
equatorial regions. Flu viruses are the only known pathogen capable of
infecting literally billions of people in a matter of months. Right now
we are in the midst of a flu pandemic caused by the swine-origin
influenza virus H1N1. Millions of people have become infected and
thousands have died, but H1N1 is not particularly virulent. There are
other flu viruses that have emerged in recent decades such as the highly
"pathogenic" (disease-causing) bird flu H5N1 that may have the potential
to cause much greater human harm.
KF: What kind of damage could it do in terms of population mortality?
MG: Currently H5N1 kills approximately 60% of those it infects, so you
don't even get a coin toss chance of survival. That's a mortality rate
on par with some strains of Ebola. Thankfully, only a few hundred people
have become infected. Should a virus like H5N1 trigger a pandemic,
though, the results could be catastrophic. During a pandemic as many as
2 or 3 billion people can become infected. A 60% mortality rate is
simply unimaginable. Unfortunately, it's not as far-fetched as it
sounds. Both China and Indonesia have reported sporadic outbreaks of the
H5N1 bird flu in pigs and sporadic outbreaks of the new pandemic virus
H1N1 in pigs as well. Should a pig become co-infected with both strains,
a hybrid mutant could theoretically arise with human transmissibility of
swine flu and the human lethality of bird flu. That's the kind of
nightmare scenario that keeps virologists up at night.
KF: How does a virus like that kill? What does it do to the body?
MG: Most often it starts with standard flu-like symptoms--fever, cough,
and muscle aches. Instead of just infecting the respiratory tract,
though, H5N1 may spread throughout the body and infect the brain, for
example, leaving victims in a coma. Other early symptoms atypical of
regular seasonal flu include vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, chest
pain, and bleeding from the nose and gums. Death is usually from acute
fulminant respiratory distress, in which one basically drowns in one's
own blood-tinted respiratory secretions.
Most of the damage is actually done by one's own immune system. H5N1
seems to trigger a "cytokine storm," an overexuberant immune reaction to
the virus. These cytokine chemical messengers set off such a massive
inflammatory reaction that on autopsy the lungs of victims may be
virus-free, meaning that your body wins, but in burning down the village
in order to save it you may not live through the process. In fact the
reason why young people may be so vulnerable is because they have the
strongest immune systems, and it's one's immune system that may kill you.
KF: How easy is it to contract the virus once it's in full swing?
MG: Catching a pandemic flu virus is essentially as easy as catching the
regular seasonal flu. During a flu pandemic about 1 in 5 people may fall
ill, but there are certainly ways to minimize one's risk via
hand-washing and social distancing techniques. In a really severe
pandemic, though, the advice would be to "shelter-in-place," isolating
oneself and one's family in one's home until the danger passes. During
such a pandemic the Department of Homeland Security uses as a key
planning assumption that the American population would be asked to
self-quarantine for up to 90 days per wave of the pandemic.
KF: Why do we have this potential disaster on our hands?
MG: The industrialization of the chicken and pork industries is thought
to have wrought these unprecedented changes in avian and swine
influenza. No one even got sick from bird flu for eight decades before a
new strain, H5N1, started killing children in 1997. Likewise, in pigs
here in the U.S. swine flu was totally stable for 8 decades before a
pig-bird-human hybrid mutant virus appeared in commercial pig
populations in 1998. It was that strain that combined with a Eurasian
swine flu virus ten years later to spawn the flu pandemic of 2009,
sickening millions of young people around the world.
The first hybrid mutant swine flu virus discovered in the United States
was at a factory farm in North Carolina in which thousands of pregnant
sows were confined in "gestation crates," veal crate-like metal stalls
barely larger than their bodies. These kind of stressful, filthy,
overcrowded conditions can provide a breeding ground for the emergence
and spread of new diseases.
So far, only thousands of people have died from swine flu. Unless we
radically change the way chickens and pigs are raised for food, though,
it may only be a matter of time before a catastrophic pandemic arises.
KF: If factory farms are to blame, why have there been plagues and flu's
throughout time, when factory farms were not around?
MG: Before the domestication of birds about 2,500 years ago, human
influenza likely didn't even exist. Similarly, before the domestication
of livestock there was no measles, small pox, and many other diseases
that have plagued humanity since they were born in the barnyard about
10,000 years ago. Once diseases jump the species barrier from the animal
kingdom, they can spread independently throughout human populations with
often tragic consequences.
The worst plague in human history was the 1918 flu pandemic triggered by
a bird flu virus that went on to kill upwards of 50 million people. The
crowded, stressful, unhygienic trench warfare conditions during World
War I that led to the emergence of the 1918 virus are replicated today
in nearly every industrial chicken shed and egg operation. Instead of
millions of vulnerable hosts to evolve within back then, we now have
billions of chickens intensively confined in factory farms, arguably the
Perfect Storm environment for the emergence and spread of hypervirulent,
so-called "predator-type" viruses like H5N1. The 1918 virus killed about
2.5% of the people it infected, 20 times deadlier than the seasonal flu.
H5N1 is now killing 60% of infected people, 20 times deadlier than the
1918 virus. So if a virus like 1918 gained easy human transmissibility,
it could make the 1918 pandemic--the deadliest plague ever--look like
the regular flu.
KF: Does handling or eating chicken or pork increase the chances of
contracting the virus?
MG: There are certainly lots of viruses people can pick up from handling
fresh meat, such as those that cause unpleasant conditions like
contagious pustular dermatitis and a well-defined medical condition
known as "butcher's warts." Even the wives of butchers appear to be at
higher risk for cervical cancer, a cancer definitively associated with
wart virus exposure. Cooking can destroy the flu virus, but the same can
be said for all the bugs that sicken 76 million Americans a year. The
problem is that people can cross-contaminate kitchen surfaces with fresh
or frozen meat before pathogens have been cooked to death. There have
been a number of cases of human influenza linked to the consumption of
poultry products, but it's not clear whether swine flu viruses get into
the meat. Regardless, the primary risk is not in the meat, but how meat
is produced. Once a new disease is spawned from factory farm conditions
it may be able spread person to person, and at that point animals--live
or dead--may be out of the picture.
KF: How do we stave off this viral apocalypse?
MG: We need to give these animals more breathing room. The Pew
Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which included a former
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, concluded that industrialized animal
agriculture posed "unacceptable" public health risks and called for
gestation crates for pigs to be banned as they're already doing in
Europe, noting that "[p]ractices that restrict natural motion, such as
sow gestation crates, induce high levels of stress in the animals and
threaten their health, which in turn may threaten human health."
Studies have shown that measures as simple as providing straw for pigs
so they don't have the immune-crippling stress of living on bare
concrete their whole lives can significantly cut down on swine flu
transmission rates. Such a minimal act--providing straw--yet we often
deny these animals even this modicum of mercy, both to their detriment
and, potentially, to ours as well.
The American Public Health Association, the largest organization of
public health professionals in the world, has called for a moratorium on
factory farms. In fact the APHA journal, the American Journal of Public
Health, published an editorial going beyond just calling for an end to
factory farms. It questioned the prudence of raising so many animals in
the first place: "It is curious...that changing the way humans treat
animals--most basically, ceasing to eat them or, at the very least,
radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten--is largely off
the radar as a significant preventive measure. Such a change, if
sufficiently adopted or imposed, could still reduce the chances of the
much-feared influenza epidemic. It would be even more likely to prevent
unknown future diseases that, in the absence of this change, may result
from farming animals intensively and from killing them for food. Yet
humanity does not consider this option....Those who consume animals not
only harm those animals and endanger themselves, but they also threaten
the well-being of other humans who currently or will later inhabit the
planet....
t is time for humans to remove their heads from the sand
and recognize the risk to themselves that can arise from their
maltreatment of other species."
KF: That is a pretty stunning statement! I know people will
wonder...."If we give up animal protein, will our immune system be
compromised... or will it be enhanced?"
MG: We've known for 20 years that the immune function of those eating
vegetarian may be superior to those eating meat. First published in
1989, researchers at the German Cancer Research Center found that
although vegetarians had the same number of disease-fighting white blood
cells compared to meat eaters, the immune cells of vegetarians were
twice as effective in destroying their targets--not only cancer cells,
but virus-infected cells as well. So a more plant-based diet may protect
both now and in the future against animal-borne diseases like pandemic
influenza.
KF: This has been a real awakening. For more information on how to move
toward a plant-based, vegan diet, check out my guide to conscious eating
on HuffPost.
Kathy Freston is a health and wellness expert and a New York Times
best-selling author. Her latest book is The Quantum Wellness Cleanse: A
21 Day Essential Guide to Healing Your Body, Mind and Spirit. Freston
promotes a body/mind/spirit approach to health and happiness that
includes a concentration on healthy diet, emotional introspection,
spiritual practice, and loving relationships. Kathy’s recent television
appearances include The Oprah Winfrey Show, Ellen, The View and Good
Morning America. www.kathyfreston.com
