I just watched this AMAZING video — Bird Flu by Dr. Michael Greger, the Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States.  A friend (You know who you are!  Thanks!) lent me the video, and it’s basically about how factory farming caused swine flu.  Yes!  I always knew factory farming was bad because hello, it’s horrible and unethical.  But — it’s also bad FROM A MEDICAL PERSPECTIVE.  It’s actually along the lines of why preschools are breeding grounds for germs — you put a bunch of preschoolers together, and BOOM! the number of flus, colds, etc., go off the charts.  Similarly, you put a bunch of pigs or chickens (the most commonly packed together animals in factory farms — sometimes there can be up to 100,000 chickens packed into 7×9inch slots right next to each other, living in their own feces in one warehouse,) a virtual petri dish for any type of virus, so the viruses spread and thrive, and eventually mutate to be able to infect humans.

Can you imagine up to 100,000 chickens packed into 7×9inch slots right next to each other, living in their own feces in one warehouse?  Yuck!  That’s what you’re buying if you spring for the cheap chicken at the supermarket.  Are you one of those people who won’t eat catfish because they’re bottom-feeders?  You should probably stop eating chickens as well — they live in and ingest some of their own waste.

Right — so, you get 100,000 chickens together packed side by side, and they become this amazing breeding ground for germs.  You can’t create a better breeding ground for bacteria or viruses.  They’re in heaven.  It’s like preschool germ factory to the nth power.  Factory farmers routinely dose these poor animals with 25 million pounds of antibiotics per year to keep the situation sort of in control, but eventually the germs mutate and become antibiotic-resistant, and we get superstrains of viruses!  Yes!  Up to 4 million chickens died in 2002 in Virginia from a recent flu superstrain mutation.  Due to the increase in number of factory farms this past decade alone, the number of bird flu outbreaks this century alone — all 9 years of it —  already outstrips the number of flu outbreaks throughout the ENTIRE twentieth century. But the really bad news — from a human perspective at least — is that eventually one of these viruses mutates and becomes able to infect human hosts.  The Spanish flu of 1918 mutated from infecting birds to being able to infect humans, and it killed 50-100 million people worldwide in weeks.  That’s why doctors get so riled up about flu shots every year — yes, usually the flu kills 1-2 people out of the 60 million people it infects every year, and the flu shots are a joke, but what if something like the 1918 flu hits again? Then we get a pandemic!  At a 2.5% death rate like the 1918 flu, and since bird flu is spread by coughing and is thus really contagious, that would be 1.5 million Americans dead in weeks.  Nice, huh?   So, factory farming is the source of our future pandemics.  Yet another reason to only buy humanely certified meats/eggs/dairy!

Interestingly enough — did you know that a lot of diseases come from animals?  Usually they’re not that dangerous to the animal host, but they mutate really fast and spread to people and kill them.  Measles — which killed 200 millions of people long ago before becoming a childhood disease because only those with a genetic mutation that made them resistant to measles survived — came from domesticating cattle.  Influenza comes from ducks — it spreads to chickens, usually when wild ducks are killed and sold in markets — in ducks influenza is a mild disease that spreads through water, but in chickens it mutates to be spread by coughing because there is no water in most chicken cages/hutches.  Whooping cough comes from caged pigs.  Typhoid fever comes from domesticated chickens.  Amazing, huh?

The other interesting thing is that the domestication of animals 10,000 years ago caused a huge increase in disease.  We wouldn’t have gotten measles, leprosy, whooping cough, etc., if we hadn’t domesticated these animals in the first place.  Putting small groups of animals together in a barnyard, and concentrating a large number of them in a town, leads to some increase in disease spreading among animals and from animals to humans.  This is why the Native American population was wiped out by measles, smallpox, whooping cough, etc, after making contact with Europeans in the 1500s — those are nonfatal childhood diseases to the Europeans who spread those viruses, but fatal viruses to the Native Americans who caught the viruses.  The Native Americans had no domesticated animals, thus no history of epidemics, and thus no resistance to a concentrated dose of many virulent viruses — measles, smallpox, whooping cough, etc.

Oh hey, so you may ask — why not just institute biosecurity measures to keep germs inside these warehouses full of chickens/pigs?  Wouldn’t that lead to keeping pandemics at bay, yet still allow us to have factory farming?

Nope, you’d have to have really tight biosecurity.  Basically, you’d have to keep the flies out, and make sure everyone who goes into and out of the warehouses is decontaminated.  The only way to do that is to decontaminate the warehouses all the time, have air locks, people showering before they go in, people showering before they come out, people wearing hazmat suits, sealing and waterproofing the floors and ceilings, incinerating all wastes — it’s just completely infeasible from a farming standpoint.  And the poultry/pig industries are doing 0 percent of this kind of containment.

You may also ask, if all this is true, why isn’t there more press about it?

I don’t know — I think the poultry/pig industries are so powerful they keep all this stuff out of the press and magazines.  One factory farmer is quoted in the movie as being less concerned about the risk of millions of Americans dying, and more concerned that the remaining live Americans won’t have enough chicken to eat.  However, very trustworthy sources have condemned factory farming — the American Public Health Association has called for a ban on factory farming.

Anyway, it’s a great video with a lot more interesting information than just the stuff on why factory farming is causing pandemics.  There’s stuff on why suburbanization and deforestation of rainforests also spreads disease from animals to people that’s quite fascinating.  I highly recommend it!  You can also read Dr. Greger’s book on Bird Flu, which is available for free online here.  He also gives talks around the country — here are his speaking engagements.

You may also ask, how should I go about avoiding supporting factory farming?

If there’s one thing you should get from this, it’s to not buy factory farmed eggs, chicken, or pork.  Seriously.  When you go out to eat, do not order the chicken or the pork.  Don’t order anything breaded — that uses eggs.  No egg-based sauces.  No mayonnaise.  No bechamel.  Don’t order ice cream, cakes, cookies, muffins, or cornbread — no eggs, seriously.  All the eggs in restaurants are factory farmed.  If you’re going to order meat, which I’d highly recommend against — order steak, lamb, or fish.  I don’t think they factory farm cows or sheep (yet . . . ).

Categories : cruelty free