Swine flu afkomstig van Amerikaanse varkensboer in Mexico?

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Die Amerikanen toch, nu hebben de Mexicanen het kennelijk weer gedaan.
Blijkt dan wel een Amerikaanse boerderij die alle regels aan hun US-laars
lappen.

Groet / Cees

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/
The outbreak of a new flu strain—a nasty mash-up of swine, avian, and
human viruses—has infected 1,000 people in Mexico and the U.S., killing
68. The World Health Organization warned Saturday that the outbreak could
reach global pandemic levels.

Is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork packer and hog producer,
linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations
Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated.
The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas
Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site.

On Friday, the U.S. disease-tracking blog Biosurveillance published a
timeline of the outbreak containing this nugget, dated April 6 (major tip
of the hat to Paula Hay, who alerted me to the Smithfield link on the
Comfood listserv and has written about it on her blog, Peak Oil
Entrepreneur):

    Residents [of Perote] believed the outbreak had been caused by
contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They
believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the
atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease
outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility
for the outbreak and attributed the cases to “flu.” However, a
municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations
indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in
pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was
unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen
responsible for this outbreak.

>From what I can tell, the possible link to Smithfield has not been
reported in the U.S. press. Searches of Google News and the websites of
the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal all came up
empty. The link is being made in the Mexican media, however. “Granjas
Carroll, causa de epidemia en La Gloria,” declared a headline in the Vera
Cruz-based paper La Marcha. No need to translate that, except to point out
that La Gloria is the village where the outbreak seems to have started.
Judging from the article, Mexican authorities treat hog CAFOs with just as
much if not more indulgence than their peers north of the border, to the
detriment of surrounding communities and the general public health. Get
this:

    De acuerdo con uno de los habitantes de la comunidad, Eli Ferrer
Cortés, los desechos fecales y orgánicos que produce Granjas Carroll
no son tratados adecuadamente, lo que genera contaminación del agua y
del viento en la region.

My rough translation: According to one community resident, the organic and
fecal waste produced by Granjas Carrol isn’t adequately treated, creating
water and air pollution in the region. I witnessed—and smelled—the same
thing in Hardin County, Iowa, a couple of years ago, another area marked
by intensive industrial hog production. The article goes on to say that
area residents have long complained of “fetid odors” in the air and water,
and swarms of flies hovering around waste lagoons. Like their counterparts
who live in CAFO-heavy U.S. areas, they also complain of respiratory
ailments. Now, with 30 percent of the area’s residents now infected with
the virulent flu bug, people are demanding that state and federal
authorities inspect hog operations there. So far, reports La Marcha, the
response has been: nada.

The Mexico City daily La Jornada has also made the link. According to the
newspaper, the Mexican health agency IMSS has acknowledged that the
orginal carrier for the flu could be the “clouds of flies” that multiply
in the Smithfield subsidiary’s manure lagoons.

I’ll be in touch with contacts in Mexico as this story develops —and I’ll
be curious to see whether the U.S. media explores the link with
Smithfield’s Mexico operation.

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