© Imelda Maurer, cdp April 28, 2009
For several weeks I’ve wanted to use my blog to write about food. It’s an issue that, for the last couple of years, has stayed with me and it won’t let go. Since the original purpose of this blog included reflections on healthy aging and quality of life in later years, the topic of food is quite apt. The issue goes far beyond issues of the individual, however, because our food choices also impact the animals raised as commodities on factory farms, the environment, the economy, the viability of family farmers, and public health.
Last week I finished listening to the audio version of the book, “The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter” by Peter Springer and Jim Mason. Just a few days later, news of the swine flu and its potential to become a pandemic hit the airwaves.
The mainstream media has only addressed the number and location of diagnosed cases of swine flu, number of deaths, the actions of public health officials, etc. None has addressed the cause. Web sites such as The Huffington Post, The Environmentalist, Farmers Weekly, Marion Nestle, however, do clearly make the connection between this global wave of swine flu and factory hog farming. Specifically, Smithfield Foods is mentioned as being the source.
Smithfield, an American-owned meat producer, owns confined animal feeding operations ‘CAFOs’ in Veracruz, México where the swine flu outbreak originated.
We Americans are accustomed to low-priced food. The hidden cost of our grocery bill is in subsidies to the factory farm owners --- corporations such as Smithfield, ConAgra, ADM, Cargill, etc.
One of the ways in which Smithfield is subsidized is by the fact that --- even here in the United States --- there are scant regulations directing the treatment of animal excrement in these CAFOs. A single farm may house (very inhumanely) tens of thousands of hogs. Their excrement far exceeds that produced by humans living in a city of up to 400,000 people. Human excrement is regulated and there is no environmental degradation as a result. On factory farms, excrement is held in ‘manure lagoons’. It is possible, according to several reports that I have read, that the carrier of the swine flu is a fly that reproduces in pig excrement. The fly can infect people by biting.
Smithfield does not have to pay for treating millions of tons of animal excrement. The result is an increase in air and water pollution, respiratory and other health problems of employees, early disability and shortened life spans of these underpaid workers. Think of the costs to city, state and federal agencies in this all-out effort to contain the spread of swine flu. Smithfield gets the break, the bigger corporate profits.
What was the REAL cost of that Easter ham?
What can each of us do to support sustainable farming, individuals and groups who practice humane and healthy farming methods?
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This is such an important topic. People tend to ignore this type of issue until they cannot run from it anymore. For some it becomes a physical health issue for others, like you and I,our moral compass just wouldn't stop pointing to the problem and we had to do something. Humans are at that point in our physical and mental evolution where we can not deny our connectedness to everything we see. We are out of step with nature and will either adapt new habits and regain a state of sustainable and funtional life or our World will adapt and we will go the way of the dinosaur. I'm putting my money on the former not the latter. Thanks.
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