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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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[Below is the original script. Some changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
Amidst the hubbub surrounding the current pandemic threat from swine flu, an epidemiological mystery has been unfolding. Authorities have designated Edgar Hernandez, a five-year-old from La Gloria in the Mexican state of Veracruz as "Patient Zero"—at least he is the earliest case they have found so far. Virologists have determined that the mutating flu is a combination of several older flu strains, commonly associated with pigs. And La Gloria is home to nearly a million pigs on a nearby factory farm.
So is so-called swine flu really just another environmental problem associated with factory farming?
After all, such large operations keep the animals in close confinement, dope them with antibiotics to keep them alive in the crowded conditions and create vast pools and piles of waste—all good ways to promote the spread of any disease.
Other health threats, such as antibiotic-resistant strains of staphylococcus aureus, have emerged from pig farms as well.
Nevertheless, this H1N1 strain has not yet been found in the pigs near La Gloria, nor is it clear how it would have jumped from the factory farm to little Edgar.
But what is clear thanks to the hard work of virologists is that this particular strain of flu got its genetic start on U.S. hog farms back in the 1990s. That's according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. How the virus jumped from pigs to humans may have nothing to do with factory farms, but confined animal feeding operations helped to breed the disease.
—David Biello
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14 Comments
Add CommentFail. If you listened to Glenn Beck you'd know that it's the Mexicans' fault.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA million hogs in one area and no sewer system, just a swine farm sewage lagoon. That is sick. Air pollution, water pollution, antibiotic resistant bacteria and now probably a new virus. Why do we allow these things anyway and not slap them with a surcharge for all the pollution they cause? I don't even like pork. I bet swine flu is spread in the water or from the flies--how many flies are associated with a million hogs?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCosmic, you might not like pork, but a lot of other people do. Industrial farming has made protein cheap, and that was the goal, way back when the government launched a war on hunger. It will be interesting to see if the flu connection affects public opinion about CAFOs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wish all pork eaters or any kind of meat eaters die of swine flu or some other such disease. Connecting pig farms to war on hunger is hilarious. If you want to fight worldwide hunger, stop eating meat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMims: Huh? A true 'war on hunger' would not include meat! Protein (pork) cheap? At what cost?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConcentration camps for living creatures is never a good thing. This case is another proof.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is time to leave out the meat and other animal products. Check out websites like http://www.MeatAlternatives.org and see how many options (healthier ones) we humans have.
Right now, we are slaughtering our only plant. Let's wake up before it will be too late.
What is a fact is that swine have the capacity to be infected by both avian and human flu, so they are a virtual mixing bowl for influenza recombination. Furthermore, most hog farms don't have the best biohazard proceedures to minimize zoonotic exposure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh well, producing meat may be too inefficient to be widespread in the future:
"We underestimated the risks ... we underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases ... and we underestimated the probabilities of temperature increases." -- Sir Nicholas Stern, author of "The Stern Report," April 17, 2008
"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." --Dr James Lovelock's lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. '07
War on hunger? thats rich. How sad is it that humans have given up on the ability to feed themselves through growing their own gardens and small farms and buying local produce from small trusted farms instead of turning into lazy consumers relying on these huge meat factories. It's not just Mexico, its everywhere. Here in Canada, the Listeriosis outbreak, the mad cow disease and on and on all due to these giant pain factories where the animals suffer in horrible discomfort until being killed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBet you'd never guess I'm a vegetarian. Obviously, converting grain into meat (or ethanol, or anything else, for that matter) is not going to be sustainable long-term as our environment degrades. If we really wanted to feed the hungry, we'd stop wasting so much food (and I'm not even talking about our propensity to consume more calories than folks in other countries).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProduce more meat, less people. Eliminate corporations altogether and maybe we'll have a chance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is at least surprising that none has noticed that the war on hunger should focus on the very "natural" cause of hunger, contamination, pollution, diseases and more: human population. We are already too many in this world. Let�s start thinking again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho is responsible for the particular business in question? It would be most helpful in apprending the situation to know more about the operators, owners, customers engaging in this operation. I think many would be very interested in balanced articles that investigate these people?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfewer people. Sceintists, please learn Enlgish. People are discrete, not continous. Fewer, not less.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVirus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs reported by multiple sources last month, including the Times of India, vaccines contaminated with deadly live H5N1 avian flu virus were distributed to 18 countries last December by a lab at an Austrian branch of Baxter. COINCIDENTLY the SAME lab that is now contracted to provide the vaccine!
Do your own research on google--this story is everywhere or click here
http://joerobertson.com/newstome/security/baxter-labs-involved-in-scandal-to-develop-avian-swine-flu-vaccine