Flu outbreak - factory farms

.... submitting this for your consideration. I think most of us have noticed how right-wing pundits are using racist fearmongering tactics to blame the swine flu on illegals from Mexico - even to the point of referring to it as the "Mexican flu." The fact that the carriers were actually a bunch of prep-school kids from Queens who went to Cancun for Spring Break seems to have been lost on them.

From the Guardian:

nojojojo ends with: If this is confirmed, what will the Repundits call it then? “Colonialism Cough”? “Greedy Gringo Fever”? 

Justicia (Justice) for Migrant Workers (J4MW) is gravely concerned about the potential backlash that Guatemalan and Mexican migrant workers may face as a result of the swine flu epidemic. J4MW questions the rise in xenophobic discourse from both politicians and the mainstream media. We are urging people to address the issues related to the epidemic but not to unfairly attack those workers who are employed annually in Canada under the auspices of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP).

Furthermore, J4MW urges Federal and Provincial officials to ensure that migrant workers are not specifically targeted. J4MW is concerned that a double standard is being implemented through the differential treatment of the thousands of migrant workers employed in Canada versus the tens of thousands of permanent residents who travel to and from Mexico annually. The exclusive targeting of migrant workers constitutes the racial profiling of specific communities.

Learning from the experience of the SARS crisis, Asian Canadian community activists were instrumental in organizing in order to counter attacks and discrimination against their community. We urge our communities to be vigilant of racial profiling and to treat all people with respect and dignity when dealing with public health concerns. We are also calling for steps to be taken to lessen the sense of public hysteria that seems to be engulfing our communities. The current response to this epidemic is only replicating the kind of discrimination and harm experienced by the Asian Canadian community during SARS.

J4MW encourages public health officers, elected officials, and others to refocus their efforts to address, not only the health of migrant workers when they arrive in Canada, but also the pervasive health and safety issues raised by workers that regularly go unattended to while they are living and working in Canada. These issues include work related injuries, the use of chemicals in the fields, over-crowded housing conditions, and poor field sanitation, among other violations of health and safety standards.

Justicia for Migrant Workers in collaboration with allied organizations such as the Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario (IAVGO), will undertake the following measures to ensure the welfare of migrant workers in Canada:

* Make available a toll-free bilingual telephone number (funded by Law Foundation of Ontario) in case of workplace injuries, discrimination or other work related concerns. The English number is 1-877-230-6311 and for service in Spanish 1-866-521 8535 (in Ontario most accidents and many illnesses that workers experience are considered workplace injuries for the purpose of Workers Compensation.)

* Develop materials for workers on how to respond to health concerns and accessing their rights, benefits and entitlements.

* Coordinate with local community organizations to support public health issues articulated by migrant workers.

* Connect migrant workers to resources in their local communities.

* Conduct workshops and consultations with workers to develop a workers-based action plan to counter perceived threats from members of local communities.

*Coordinate efforts with other community and ethno-racial organizations to combat stereotypes and

*Closely monitor abuses and forms of harassments that might be directed at all migrant workers (documented and undocumented.)

For more information please contact Chris Ramsaroop, (647) 834 - 4932, chrisramsaroop@gmail.com, or j4mw@justicia4migrantworkers.org [8]

What the mainstream media is NOT telling us here in North America is that there is a connection to the factory farms in Mexico owned by an American corporation.

With at least the tacit backing of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971. Six weeks later an outbreak of the disease forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic.

A U.S. intelligence source told Newsday last week he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at a U.S. Army base and CIA training ground in the Panama Canal Zone, with instructions to turn it over to the anti-Castro group.

The 1971 outbreak, the first and only time the disease has hit the Western Hemisphere, was labeled the "most alarming event" of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. African swine fever is a highly contagious and usually lethal viral disease that infects only pigs and, unlike swine flu, cannot be transmitted to humans. All production of pork, a Cuban staple, halted, apparently for several months. . .

 

The U.S. intelligence source said that early in 1971 he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at Ft. Gulick, an Army base in the Panama Canal Zone. The CIA also operates a paramilitary training center for career personnel and mercenaries at Ft. Gulick.

The source said he was given instructions to turn the container with the virus over to members of an anti-Castro group.

The container then was given to a person in the Canal Zone, who took it by boat and turned it over to persons aboard a fishing trawler off the Panamanian coast. The source said the substance was not identified to him until months after the outbreak in Cuba. He would not elaborate further.

Seventy percent of all antibiotics in the U.S. do not go to humans but to healthy livestock, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The practice of injecting huge quantities of hogs with antibiotics seems to be having the consequence of nurturing a host of antibiotic resistance related diseases like MRSA. Unlike antibiotics, the pharmaceutical industry typically does not get much involved in vaccines because there is so little money in it. During the 1976 swine flu epidemic they would not produce vaccines unless the federal government assumed the risk for bad vaccine outcomes - a form of socialized medicine for capital.

In Michigan government flu seminars I attended two years ago, I was informed that officials expect at least 70,000 to die from the next pandemic flu when it eventually hits the state. The chief mode of medical action? Besides antivirals and vaccinations it's a hefty dose of "social distancing." In other words, close the factories, close the schools, stop taking busses and just stay away from people. The poor and working class will have the most difficulty doing this as anthropologist Paul Farmer eloquently makes clear in his "Infections and Inequalities (1999)." The Third World will suffer immeasurably, lacking easy access to antivirals and vaccinations.

Experts have long warned that "industrial farm animal production" (IFAP) leads to potentially serious human health impacts. A tragically prophetic study done by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production of 2008 concludes, "... one of the most serious unintended consequences of industrial food animal production is the growing public health threat of these types of facilities. In addition to the contribution of IFAP to the major threat of antimicrobial resistance, IFAP facilities can be harmful to workers, neighbors, and even those living far from the facilities through air and water pollution, and via the spread of disease."

The study continues, "Workers in and neighbors of IFAP facilities experience high levels of respiratory problems, including asthma. In addition, workers can serve as a bridging population, transmitting animal-borne diseases to a wider population."

As residents of La Gloria protested the stench and pointed to the hog farm as the source of their sickness, Mexican authorities went out of their way to divert suspicions that Smithfield's Carroll Farms had anything to do with the unusual illnesses being reported. Although state health officials sprayed the village of La Gloria to kill off swarms of flies coming from the company's nearby open-pit manure lagoons, explanations lit on anything but the hog farm....

For years scientists have known that pigs incubate and mutate viruses and many have warned that "factory farms" where large numbers are kept in close quarters create a perfect breeding ground for the rapid evolution of disease. The massive use of antibiotics means that viruses seek mutations resistant to the medicines. In the past, few cases of swine flu passing to human transmission were reported but it has long been known that it is possible. This virus posed a particular risk because of its virulent capacity for human-to-human contagion.

Since the early days of the outbreak, evidence has piled up on the swine origin of the disease. Co-author of a key report in Nature, biologist Michael Worobey said, "The current strain evidently spread without anyone noticing it for 10 years," referring to spread among pig populations.  Science News quotes him, concluding, "Across the genome, this is something that came from pigs ... We need to spend more energy looking at what's in pigs."

The consensus is that the H1N1 virus is a mutant form of swine flu, human seasonal flu, and bird flu. In itself, it is not lethal, but it leads to complications of "atypical pneumonia." The pneumonia is atypical because it occurs out of season and because victims tend to concentrate in the middle age range-unlike regular pneumonia that picks off the very young and the very old, deaths of this virus tend to be within the 20-40 range....

One of the reasons oversight is so lax on factory farms is that a stark distinction exists among agencies and regulations pertaining to human health and animal health. It seems that although the virus leaps species barriers with deadly ease, bureaucracies cannot. When asked why the FAO assumed that the source of contagion on the Canadian farm was a worker returning from Mexico rather than the pigs infecting the worker, FAO spokesperson Northoff replied that the organization could not investigate to confirm the human-to-animal link because the FAO "only works on animal health issues."...

Mexico's experience as the epicenter of the swine flu pandemic provides an opportunity to expose a system that didn't work. Without elaborating on each, here is a list for further collective analysis:

• Self-monitoring of industry and globalization provisions that enable polluting industries to locate where laws and enforcement are lax encourage practices that threaten health and the environment, like open-pit manure lagoons, non-reporting of animal illness, cover-ups, and other factors that contributed to the swine flu epidemic.
• The centrality of foreign investment in the Mexican economy creates a climate where transnational corporations with large investments can exercise coercive power over government agencies on all levels.
• NAFTA failed to promote a strategically important technology transfer to Mexico in the health field and others, and has proved a disincentive to national research and development.

All analysis must include a gender perspective. Women made up 56% of the deaths from the swine flu in Mexico and pregnant women are at greater risk of severe illness and death. Since the H1N1 flu attacks a middle age range, this poses a serious challenge. Also the compromised immune systems of many Mexicans who live without adequate health and nutrition-a condition that includes a disproportionate number of women-contributes to flu mortality rates.

The Great Swine Flu Coverup

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22582

"Citizen networks need to organize.."