The Mexican swine flu, which scared the jeebers out of millions of people, doesn’t seem so scary after all. It’s starting to look like your run-of-the-mill flu. It got off to a nasty start in Mexico, but that may be because a lot of people there avoid or have trouble getting to a doctor. There’s still a lot of folk medicine going on in those little villages. So, the American supermarkets and drug stores may soon be able to restock their shelves with anti-microbial hand lotion and face masks. As a sidebar, this reminds me of the run on duct tape a few years ago, after the government released a report about how to survive if a terrorist releases radiation or deadly germs near your home. (I.e., the report said to tape big sheets of plastic around your windows and doors.)
There’s another little side-bar going on in the liberal blogosphere right now about the pig farm in Mexico where the current swine flu might have originated. (I can’t say whether this side-issue is also happening on in the twitter-osphere; the attention spans there are probably too short for it.) Some reporters and Mexican officials are tracing the new flu to a village named La Gloria, which is near an industrial food production farm run by Smithfield Foods – yes, an American corporation that produces and sells pork. Actually, Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer in the world. Smithfield denies that their pigs were involved, saying that they are clean — none of them showed any signs of having the latest flu strain. Of course, you’ve got to wonder just how thoroughly they looked and tested; and whether the local health officials were willing to risk angering the gringo outfit that probably comprises 90% of the local job market and economy.
Personally, I don’t seek to blame Smithfield Foods alone for the flu; they’re probably running their pig farms like most any other industrial pig farm, no better and no worse. Who I do blame is us, we Americans who can’t think outside the box about our diets. I am a former meat-eater who became a vegetarian about 15 years ago, and over time I’ve seen more and more evidence of the stress that meat consumption places upon the world. Meat consumption today is big business, a product of international corporations which grow, process and serve most of the meat eaten in America and in other developed nations. The stress from it includes poorer health in old age and the resulting burden on medical resources (reflected in soaring health care and Medicare costs); and increased energy use (fuels needed for growing animals, transporting them and refrigerating them) and the global warming greenhouse gases they produce. It’s a bit harder to get fat on a balanced vegetarian diet; and grains, beans and veggies certainly use less fuel and have a smaller “carbon footprint” per calorie consumed. And now, it’s starting to look as though ham and bacon and spare ribs encourage the development of super-bugs that could take down a whole lot of people.
Why is this? Modern pig farms, like any other kind of industrial food-animal facility, try to maximize their efficiency by jamming animals as close together as possible. Also, pigs have genetic DNA structures that in certain ways are closer to human genetic structures than with most other animals (hmm, what does that say about us???). A whole bunch of pigs jammed together, tended by low-paid human workers who may not have such good sanitary habits, become a central hub for infectious diseases that could affect humans. They present a lot of opportunity for viruses to do what they do naturally — i.e., mutate, change their own genetic codes a bit. So you have all these pigs exchanging germs with humans and each other, each pig incubating millions and millions of different types of germs. This gives these germs new chances to develop even more variations, which affect their ease of transmission and what they can do to you once they reach you. Most of these virus variations are failures; they die off quickly. But every so often, by luck of the draw, a new combination occurs that can spread easily and can do some real damage to humans.
If you had a pig in the forest who developed this new super-bug, it probably wouldn’t get far. But a pig jammed together with hundreds or thousands of other pigs will almost assuredly spread it to the other pigs, who in turn will then spread it to the humans who tend them (or who live near-by in villages like La Gloria, possibly by insects). Oh, and another thing — pigs crammed together in farms also interact with birds, and we know that birds are also pretty good at developing flu viruses that can affect humans. The pig farms can’t keep birds from landing near their pigs (or roosting in their living areas) and depositing their droppings so that pigs can breath or ingest the more successful avian germs strains. Well, that’s another head-start that these pigs get in developing germs that can really knock human beings for a loop.
It’s kind of like having a house with a door that opens with a six-digit code number. Every day you punch in six numbers on the door panel, and if use the right code, it lets you in. You set the code number, which can be any number from 000000 to 999999; i.e., there are one million possible number combinations. Let’s say that there’s a bad guy in the neighborhood who wants to get into your home and rob everything and then kill you during the night. The house is pretty secure, and the only way the robber can get in is to punch in the right code number. Let’s also say that the robber only gets one chance each night to punch in one number; he doesn’t know the number, so he guesses. And he’s very persistent; he keeps coming back each night, trying another number.
If we assume that he has no idea about what number you would use, nor whether you would use some kind of pattern (like 212121) or just select a number randomly (like 598830, perhaps), then on average it will take him 500,000 nights to come up with the right code. Let’s see, that’s 1,369 years. I’m not a good math guy, but you could also come up with probability bands, e.g. something like a 90% chance that it will take him at least 100 years, etc. (Not sure of the exact number, but it would be something like that). Obviously, there’s only a one-in-a-million chance that he will finally break in and kill you on any given night. So you decide, OK, I can live with that.
But let’s say that things change, so that the robber can try out a whole lot of numbers every night; then his chances get better and better. And let’s say that he also gets some info about you, on what kind of number you might select. Based on your past decisions, he knows that you are likely to use a subtle pattern in the numbers, e.g. 791827 (the second, fourth and sixth number are in descending order). Say that the bad guy figures out what that pattern is, and is smart enough to use it to narrow down the list of possible numbers. Now this robber is a whole lot more dangerous. That’s the difference between a thousand pigs wandering around in a forest, occasionally being hunted and eaten by a human, and a thousand pigs jammed together in an industrial factory-farm in a third-world country. Viruses have a much better chance with such a pig farm of finding the right code to “break in and rob the human house”. The odds are being stacked in their favor.
So perhaps we got off light this time. The birds, pigs and people in Mexico have cooked up (thru the enhanced trial-and-error process going on at pig factories such as Smithfield Foods) another new virus, which has some “legs”. It has the right “code” to spread around in people; but it doesn’t have the punch to do more-than-average damage. In reality, humans are like a house with more than one door and door code; the robber (virus) might figure out the code to get in thru the outside door, but might not get the code to the master bedroom where you sleep. Thus you won’t be killed. BUT, with pig farms giving these “robbers” more and more chances and more head-starts regarding information structures (from the viruses they exchange with humans and birds), sooner or later a really deadly virus will emerge.
That’s the trade off for those delicious spare ribs at Chili’s or that affordable Easter ham from the local supermarket or that bacon / ham McMuffin at Mickey D’s. Don’t blame us vegetarians when the big avian-pig-human virus finally does come knocking at your door.
Jim,
I have to say that my considered opinion and response to the whole swine flu “thing” is an underwhelmed response. The latest I heard (on last night’s late evening news) is that WORLD WIDE there have been 1000 cases of confirmed H1N1 flu, with perhaps 19 deaths in Mexico itself.
For these people who have been sick, some of whom may have died, the H1N1 flu is a catastrophe and I express my sorrow for the loss of these individuals. Yet I must say that the panic that has spread by the gov’t’s resposne to this flu seems totally out of proportion to its effect on the world-wide population.
And I must confess that I never get in a car to go some place but I don’t wonder if I will return home alive–and here one need not be a bad driver. The problem may be other drivers–particularly drunk drivers.
Then too, while I notice the frenzy to close schools in the Chicagoland area because of the flu, it seems nobody seems to give a second tho’t to the numbers of young teens who have been out right killed by human beings in Chgo in the last year. The latest of these cases is a child of 14 who was literally kidnapped (it seems by gang members), tortured, shot, and burned in an gangway (a place to walk between houses) in Chicago. Would people gave as much attention to this massive killing of a generation of young people as they are giving to the H1N1 flu.
Furthermore, once the media gets hold of a story like the “swine” flu, it seems “the-sky-is-falling syndrome” sets in. My take on this “sky-is-falling syndrome” is: Simple precautions such as washing hands (it seems this is real news to some people), covering one’s mouth when sneezing or coughing (which I learned as a simple matter of courtesy when I was young) would go a long way toward containing spread of any contagion.
As to the issue of the possible neglect of Smithfield Foods to take proper precautions regarding their meat production, here is another case of what we have recently had in the U.S.–the peanut butter that was contaminated with salmonella (or was it E. Coli?) and which I still refuse to buy. Then there was the spinach problem (was it last year?)–again with the same problem as the peanut butter. Another problem was the so-called “salsa” problem that was found to be caused by jalepeno peppers in the salsa–once again the same problem as the peanut butter and the spinach.
Then there was the pet food from China that poisoned an unknown number of pets–from Iams, no less! How about the Colgate toothpaste from China that had radiator fluid in it? I still refuse to buy Colgate anything.
It would seem to me that food producers throughout the world should afford their workers the means to practice careful sanitary practices within their working environment; so rather than blaming the workers themselves, it seems to me that once again the producers who have the most money to make should be the ones to spend some of their profits on providing and even training their workers in proper precautions regarding the spread of any form of disease.
And this problem of proper sanitary conditions regarding workers in big factories and large farms is not the only place such training should be afforded workers. Let me give an example: A few years ago I was in a grocery store intending to buy tomatoes. A young man was stacking these tomatoes while I approached. About a foot from him, I saw him start to sneeze. He raised both hands–palms toward his face–sneezed into his palms, and (believe this or not) immediately proceeded in the stacking process of the tomatoes. I must confess that day I did not buy any tomatoes. And ever since, I cannot get a tomato home without washing it thoroughly with soap and water. (I could not believe my eyes when I saw that–and the young man never skipped a beat in his work.) Obviously, he had no clue whatsoever of proper sanitary precautions.
So, it seems that when it comes to the “vegetarian thing”, meat seems to be low on the list of food causing health problems throughout the world.
Then too, I find myself wondering about people who spend a great deal of time pondering food–whether they are “fat” people or “thin” people–those who seem to be able to not “get enuf” food and those who seem to worry they are getting “too much” food. I find myself thinking that only in America would people have such problems. World wide, it seems to me that people who may not know where their next meal is coming from, people whose last meal was how many days ago–these people are simply glad to have whatever it is they can find to eat.
I say much of this frenzy is caused by the media and the politicians, the last of whom are usually in the “CYA” mode, making sure they will not be held responsible for anything whatsoever–well, unless it is a terrifically good thing, well praised by their constituants.
And as to those who choose to be vegetarians or those who choose to be meat eaters, I say whatever floats your boat.
I must confess to a sympathy for animals that end up being eaten by people. But two thoughts come to mind regarding such meat eating: One is the approach of the Native Americans who “thanked” the animals that gave their life so the people could eat. Another is far afield from that approach, nevertheless, in the ballpark of the Native Americans: Temple Grandin (an autistic person and whose works I have read) has spent much of her life in studying the “feelings” of animals and in working to make sure the animals used for meat production suffer little, if at all, in the process. As I see it, a related approach to that of the Native Americans, altho perhaps a hi-tech approach version of the Native American approach.
And one more thing: While I have no special “gripe” about vegetarians nor do I have any particular need to “push” eating meat of any kind, years ago (perhaps it was in the late 1970s or early 1980s) I happened to hear a very famous (at the time)woman speak about the wonderful health values of vegetarianism; she spoke beautifully of the wonderful qualities of eating wild grain, etc., and how she knew with a certainty she would live a long, healthful life and was certain that she would never contract intestinal cancer of any kind. Within two years she was dead–of the very intestinal cancer she was so sure she would be saved from. I would not presume to say her food preferences “caused” her death from cancer, but they also obviously did not “prevent” her death from cancer. And recently another young(er) person (a friend of a son) was very careful to follow an absolutely strict vegetarian diet; and again, he was stricken with cancer.
I tend to take the attitude that if “God’s going to get you,” he’ll have lightning strike from a blue sky if he has to.
And we are back to the “sky-is-falling syndrome” where the media picks up a story and “runs with it”; then people panic when perhaps the energy of their panic should be placed in other areas–the number of people killed by autos, the crisis of an entire generation of young people being wiped out by gang warfare in the cities.
Then too I remember as a child in the 1940s being forced to stay inside the house for the entire month of August (no AC in those days) when polio was “about.” And it was “Ma, can we go to the show (movies)? No. Ma, can we go out? No. You have to stay inside the house.” Simple sanitary precaustion seems to be “new” to too many people.
MCS
Comment by MCS — May 4, 2009 @ 10:49 am
Jim,
I have to say that my considered opinion and response to the whole swine flu “thing” is an underwhelmed response. The latest I heard (on last night’s late evening news) is that WORLD WIDE there have been 1000 cases of confirmed H1N1 flu, with perhaps 19 deaths in Mexico itself.
For these people who have been sick, some of whom may have died, the H1N1 flu is a catastrophe and I express my sorrow for the loss of these individuals. Yet I must say that the panic that has spread by the gov’t’s resposne to this flu seems totally out of proportion to its effect on the world-wide population.
And I must confess that I never get in a car to go some place but I don’t wonder if I will return home alive–and here one need not be a bad driver. The problem may be other drivers–particularly drunk drivers.
Then too, while I notice the frenzy to close schools in the Chicagoland area because of the flu, it seems nobody seems to give a second tho’t to the numbers of young teens who have been out right killed by human beings in Chgo in the last year. The latest of these cases is a child of 14 who was literally kidnapped (it seems by gang members), tortured, shot, and burned in an gangway (a place to walk between houses) in Chicago. Would people gave as much attention to this massive killing of a generation of young people as they are giving to the H1N1 flu.
Furthermore, once the media gets hold of a story like the “swine” flu, it seems “the-sky-is-falling syndrome” sets in. My take on this “sky-is-falling syndrome” is: Simple precautions such as washing hands (it seems this is real news to some people), covering one’s mouth when sneezing or coughing (which I learned as a simple matter of courtesy when I was young) would go a long way toward containing spread of any contagion.
As to the issue of the possible neglect of Smithfield Foods to take proper precautions regarding their meat production, here is another case of what we have recently had in the U.S.–the peanut butter that was contaminated with salmonella (or was it E. Coli?) and which I still refuse to buy. Then there was the spinach problem (was it last year?)–again with the same problem as the peanut butter. Another problem was the so-called “salsa” problem that was found to be caused by jalepeno peppers in the salsa–once again the same problem as the peanut butter and the spinach.
Then there was the pet food from China that poisoned an unknown number of pets–from Iams, no less! How about the Colgate toothpaste from China that had radiator fluid in it? I still refuse to buy Colgate anything.
It would seem to me that food producers throughout the world should afford their workers the means to practice careful sanitary practices within their working environment; so rather than blaming the workers themselves, it seems to me that once again the producers who have the most money to make should be the ones to spend some of their profits on providing and even training their workers in proper precautions regarding the spread of any form of disease.
And this problem of proper sanitary conditions regarding workers in big factories and large farms is not the only place such training should be afforded workers. Let me give an example: A few years ago I was in a grocery store intending to buy tomatoes. A young man was stacking these tomatoes while I approached. About a foot from him, I saw him start to sneeze. He raised both hands–palms toward his face–sneezed into his palms, and (believe this or not) immediately proceeded in the stacking process of the tomatoes. I must confess that day I did not buy any tomatoes. And ever since, I cannot get a tomato home without washing it thoroughly with soap and water. (I could not believe my eyes when I saw that–and the young man never skipped a beat in his work.) Obviously, he had no clue whatsoever of proper sanitary precautions.
So, it seems that when it comes to the “vegetarian thing”, meat seems to be low on the list of food causing health problems throughout the world.
Then too, I find myself w
Comment by MCS — May 4, 2009 @ 10:49 am