Health
Swine Flu and Factory Farming
Published April 26, 2009 @ 02:32PM PT
Woo-hoo! This flu outbreak has become another epidemic media sensation! I just love those.
But this aspect of the story will probably not rise to the level of over-hyped, or even mildly hyped, or even plainly presented, news: factory farming by a Smithfield subsidiary is probably responsible for the swine flu outbreak.
Grist's Tom Philpott writes about the flu-industrial hog farm connection:
... Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations [in] Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carrol, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site—a level nearly equal to Smithfield’s total U.S. hog production. ...
I just searched Google News for "swine flu Smithfield" and got back that Grist story and a detailed report on the Huffington Post by David Kirby, "Swine Flu Outbreak -- Nature Biting Back at Industrial Animal Production?"
It isn't a 'story' just like it isn't a story when confinement chicken farming becomes a major nexus for the spread of avian flu, which it is. I remember reading a story about bird flu once where upwards of 70,000 birds were slaughtered on two Eastern European farms. Two farms. Nowhere in the article was the production method discussed, let alone mentioned as a possible problem.
Yes, these illnesses can spread through smaller farms and wild animals. Though as I've said before, a factory farm is a filthy, unplumbed slum for animals. Human beings who live in filthy slum conditions are less healthy overall and more likely to fall prey to, or start, disease epidemics - everybody knows that, but it doesn't translate into what's perceived as being the best practice for animal growing.
The same is not true of non-living things. Get a pile of screwdrivers together and they are no more or less 'healthy' than a single screwdriver sitting in a spacious drawer away from its kind.
Critters aren't widgets. That leads to a lot of messy complications, but the principles of biology aren't wrong because they're inconvenient.
What you can do? Cut meat consumption and stop eating factory farmed meat.
Which kind is the factory farmed kind? Any kind that isn't raised on pasture, without confinement. Look for grass fed meat, especially. An organic label alone isn't sufficient guarantee of best practices, though organically raised animals can't be fed pre-emptive antibiotics, so they have to be raised at least somewhat more healthfully.
Update: An EnviroKnow transcript of today's press briefing on the flu mentions agriculture only to note that you can't get swine flu from eating pork. None of the preventive or containment measures described relate to unhealthy agricultural practices.
(Aerial photography of a typical confinement hog farm with attendant lagoons of pig manure can be found courtesy of friendsoffamilyfarmers on Flickr.)
Past Performance and Future Rural Health
Published April 24, 2009 @ 01:12PM PT
Historians tell us that if we don't learn about history, we're bound to repeat it. So lately I've been delving into old research papers here at the Center for Rural Affairs, hoping past research will inform our current research on health care. What I've found so far is astounding.
My colleagues frequently talk about the profound and prophetic report on vertical integration of hog production, called, Who Will Sit Up With the Corporate Sow? Written in 1975, the title is a play on the act of "sitting up with a sow" if she is having a hard time birthing her piglets, but in this case refers to holding corporations accountable when it comes to unethical business practices that force out family farmers. The report accurately predicted the most onerous impacts that consolidation and vertical integration would have on family farm hog producers over the last 30 years.
Here is a short excerpt:
Overall, the emerging breeding stock industry is a hustle which confinement has made possible. It is significant that a number of confinement units identified here are well outside of traditional hog producing areas. This partly reflects the potential of confinement for accommodating livestock production to environmentally harsh areas...
The combination of breeding stock specialization, large scale production and movement into new areas all point to more loss of producer independence.
Translation - as farmers become more specialized, are further away from truly competitive markets, and expensive technology allows more animals to be crammed into tighter quarters, we will see fewer skilled producers, more investors, and a loss of independence for those producers. While this seems evident to us now in hindsight, it was not at all clear in 1975 that this would be the case.
In the same vein as Who Will Sit Up With the Corporate Sow?, came Wheels of Fortune in 1976. The report examined the impact of center pivot irrigation development on the ownership and control of farmland and water rights.
It found center pivot irrigation to be a more capital intensive form of irrigation, and the popularity of the method was driving concentration of land by non-farm investors. Again, spot on conclusions about what has happened to agriculture in the last 30 years - fewer farmers, larger land holdings, more absentee and corporate control (if not outright ownership) of farming operations.
Then there was the Small Farm Energy Primer, written in 1980 as farmers were struggling to pay the high cost of energy amidst expanding use of energy-intensive farming technology. The complexity and expense of energy-intensive farming make intimidating barriers to young couples trying to get a start in farming.
Thus small family farmers are directly threatened by large-scale mechanization developed in an era of cheap energy. In response, the small family farmer can make use of renewable energy resources, demonstrating that skills and resourcefulness - the human factor - is once again at a premium in agriculture. Again, all obvious conclusions now that were anything but obvious at the time.
Our research lately has been about the dynamics of our current health care system and how reform will effect rural people and communities. We have released two papers so far, with more on the way in the coming months.
In Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity in Rural America, we review the trends indicating that overall obesity is more prevalent for rural adults than urban adults. This is a particular concern since obesity leads to other preventable diseases and is the second leading cause of death in the United States.
Implied in the research is that if we don't take some of the actions this paper discusses to control rural obesity within the upcoming health reform, rural Americans will die more frequently and be sicker as a result.
In our second paper, The Top 10 Rural Issues for Health Care Reform, we investigate the numerous unique health care issues facing rural people and rural places. Any health reform must consider the needs of rural communities and how they differ from our urban counterparts, and this paper explores how these differences necessitate special solutions. This paper is also condensed into a fact sheet.
Is this research as on target as it has been in the past? Not only is our track record good, but we rely on the same principles of research as we always have.
We are committed to rigorous analysis and our research is not guided by the winds of politics. And because we live and work the rural topics we research, we have the experiences of our families, friends and neighbors to corroborate our analysis. As the health care debate grows, you can judge for yourself whether we hit our mark.
Vertical Supper
Published April 23, 2009 @ 03:52PM PT
Raiding the internet fridge for your intellectual delectation ...
- People's continuous exposure to bisphenol A may be contributing to obesity.
- If you're gardening this year, please stay away from using peat.
- Pennsylvania already has agricultural energy plans for their share of the stimulus.
- How to regrow a rainforest.
- Vertical urban agriculture may be coming to a city near you, see video:
Cooking: Brainfood, Tasty Downfall
Published April 22, 2009 @ 06:30AM PT
Anthropologist Richard Wrangham was interviewed in the New York Times recently talking about how cooking made us human. Which is to say that it makes a lot more energy available to our digestive tracts than raw foods, allowing us to get away with smaller digestive systems and energy-hogging, glucose-chugging brains.
... The brain, which accounts for 2 percent of our body weight, sucks down roughly 20 percent of our daily calories. A picky eater, it demands a constant supply of glucose ...
In part, cooking achieves this by softening food. Wrangham spoke to The Economist a while ago about the digestive effects of eating softer food:
... Another telling experiment, conducted on rats, did not rely on cooking. Rather the experimenters ground up food pellets and then recompacted them to make them softer. Rats fed on the softer pellets weighed 30% more after 26 weeks than those fed the same weight of standard pellets. The difference was because of the lower cost of digestion.
Indeed, Dr Wrangham suspects the main cause of the modern epidemic of obesity is not overeating (which the evidence suggests—in America, at least—is a myth) but the rise of processed foods. These are softer, because that is what people prefer. Indeed, the nerves from the taste buds meet in a part of the brain called the amygdala with nerves that convey information on the softness of food. It is only after these two qualities have been compared that the brain assesses how pleasant a mouthful actually is. ...
Our ability to process food in ways that make it easier to digest seems to represent a leap akin to the development of mitochondria in single-celled organisms. The development of mitochondria in cells allowed 13 times the net energy production from sugars as could be gotten by processing sugars without a mitochondrion.
Cells that had mitochondria went on to be the parents of all multicellular lifeforms. There just doesn't seem to be enough get-up-and-go in the other kind to produce cooperative organisms like sponges, plants, fish, cockroaches or apes.
Where I'm going with this is that the amount of energy that can be gathered from food has big consequences. While we thrive on a higher energy diet than most of our mammalian kin, we can't properly handle the overabundance we're presented with today.
So next time you're in the store and you're tempted by the bread or pasta made with refined flour, the soda, the sweet cereal in wholly unnatural shapes, the russet potato, consider an option a little lower on the glycemic index. Get the whole grain option, get more of the food that's still obviously from a plant.
Because a better evolution of the species doesn't seem to be in the offing. Unless by 'better', you mean more diabetes ridden, or by 'evolution', you mean prematurely keeled over.
(Photo credit: Uwe Hermann on Flickr.)
What's Your Story?
Published April 17, 2009 @ 09:45AM PT
Do you know who grows your food? If you do, have you asked your farmer what his health insurance situation is?
Every farmer and rural resident I know seems to have a health care disaster story.
Nothing was more clear to me last week as I criss-crossed Iowa holding health care forums with my colleagues at the Iowa Citizen Action Network and the Iowa Farmers' Union.
One farmer talked about getting kicked off his insurance plan because he got diabetes. Another woman, with her 3 children in tow, talked about how far she had to drive to get her kids their shots. Folks opened up about the need for preventative care, more medical professionals in their communities, better access to healthy food, and the need for a public insurance option. One woman even teared up as she described a violent situation in her community that could have been prevented with adequate access to mental health facilities.
Then in my office yesterday, I had another incredible conversation with a 77-year-young farmer from Montana. He told me how medical debt nearly cost him the farm when his wife got cancer.
And this morning, an article in the Nation caught my eye about a woman whose husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and whose daughter was in a horse riding accident that left her paralyzed. The financial strain due to medical expenses has expended the savings of the author, Kate Michelman. I was particularly inspired by this quote:
I do not tell this story because it is unique. On the contrary, the point is precisely that countless people across the country are living it. And millions more are a crisis away from joining them--one lost job, a diagnosis, an accident.
Regardless of how secure your own situation may seem, almost all of us are one crisis away from relying on the mercy of an unforgiving health care system. How certain are you that your insurance will be there when you need it?
Every story I hear touches me, and after I sort through the sadness or disbelief of each story, I am left angry. Anger is good, though. Anger motivates us to search for a solution that doesn't drive people into bankruptcy and other desperate circumstances. Anger helps us realize we are powerful when we are many.
What's your story? Or your farmers' stories? Chances are, hearing them might make us all angry.
Channel that anger towards action and join others in your area demanding affordable health reform.
(Photo credit: José Goulão on Flickr.)
