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Swine flu scare puts spotlight on factory farms

Shawn Doherty  —  5/04/2009 4:10 pm

As the world braces for a pandemic that has likely surfaced in Wisconsin and has already killed more than 80 people in Mexico and a toddler in Texas, reports, questions, fears and rumors about how, when and where the scary new swine influenza originated are spreading even more quickly than the disease itself.

On Wednesday there were reports on the electronic tracking system ProMED that researchers may have traced the flu's genetic ancestors to a hybrid virus that caused outbreaks on hog farms in North Carolina in 1998. And investigators are looking at industrial-scale hog operations in Veracruz, Mexico, as the possible epicenter of this deadly new strain.

Also Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that three probable swine flu cases have been identified in Wisconsin and four of Milwaukee's public schools have been closed indefinitely.

These fast-breaking developments have recharged a simmering debate in Wisconsin over the growth of factory farms. For years, environmentalists and public health advocates have bemoaned the trend toward large scale farming operations that swallow up the state's traditional family farms.

The outbreak in Mexico, critics say, is exactly the kind of public health disaster they have been worried about. "This is the sort of thing that could happen right here in Wisconsin in the future," said Jamie Saul, an attorney with the Madison-based Midwest Environmental Advocates.

"When you have thousands and tens of thousands of animals crammed together in filthy football-field sized sheds beak to beak or snout to snout atop their own wastes, you are creating a breeding ground for disease," said Dr. Michael Greger, director of public health for the Humane Society of the United States. "We used to think these viruses came only from Hong Kong or Southeast Asia, but now viruses with pandemic potential can arise and spread from virtually anywhere that animals are kept in these conditions," he said. "And that can happen even in Wisconsin."

Wisconsin has about 200 factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations, as the industry prefers to call them. A CAFO is any livestock operation that has 1,000 or more "animal units," a measurement of waste and manure. That translates to an operation with at least 700 cows, 2,500 pigs, or 55,000 turkeys.

Opponents of these industrial farms are attempting to use the occasion to warn the public about a threat that has been long in coming without appearing to exploit the crisis. But it is a line that some with ties to the agricultural industry in Wisconsin say has been crossed.

Not one pig infected with this particular virus has yet been found on the farm under investigation in Mexico, or anywhere else, though testing is ongoing. Claims linking the flu to Mexico's hog farms are "mass hysteria," said UW Platteville animal sciences professor John Tembei. "Prices of pork are falling, and all because of pure speculation and fear," Tembei said.

The media feeds the hysteria, he complains, by favoring sensational stories over basic accounts of issues. "Very seldom do you hear the media talking about the fact that if you eat pork, you won't get infected," he said.

It is the small family farmer in Wisconsin who will pay the price, he predicts, as the demand for pork falls. "My students are getting calls from worried parents," he said. "We talked about this in class today."

Pork producers are prodding the government to change the name of the virus from swine flu to the North American influenza or to simply H1N1.

This deadly outbreak is not the first time experts have identified what they call a unique triple hybrid, a mutation of human, bird and pig flu virus. In 1998, a new swine flu virus, a human-pig hybrid, had infected a massive hog operation in North Carolina. By the next year, it had acquired two gene segments from bird viruses as well, mutating into what Greger called a "never-before described triple reassortment virus -- a hybrid of a human virus, a SWINE virus, and a bird virus." In months, that unusual strain spread to 22 other states, including Wisconsin.

It is these lethal strains, Greger said, that researcher bulletins on ProMED are now identifying as a "primary progenitor" of the virus currently terrifying the world. This heritage, he added, could explain one reason H1N1 seems to be spreading so quickly from human to human -- it is derived in part from a human virus.

There is no evidence that humans can pick the virus up from infected pigs. Yet nobody knows how, or where, the leap from pigs to humans then took place. "Perhaps a fly was a vector," offered Shahla Werner, the director of the local Sierra Club chapter and an entomologist. It is these kinds of unknowns, she said, that make the factory farms so frightening.

Scientists have worried for years that mutations and metamorphoses might create super viruses that could jump from one species to the next and, in this age of global mobility, easily travel around the world. In the past, dangerous viruses like the avian flu originated from places like Asia, where people and poultry flock together in close proximity.

The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production issued a report last year warning that "the continued recycling of viruses… in large herds or flocks [will] increase opportunities for the generation of novel viruses through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human to human transmission."

The report also warned that overuse of antibiotics on the farms was creating drug-resistant Staph infections, while sewage spills were leading to outbreaks of E coli and other infections.

And in 2003, the American Public Health Association, the national trade organization for public health officials, called for a moratorium on factory farms because of similar concerns.

Saul and other local foes of the Wisconsin operations have a long list of other complaints, including groundwater contamination, mountains of manure, unbearable odors and plumes of bacteria that allegedly lead to respiratory problems. Critics also complain about the inhumane conditions they say animals are kept in.

But industry representatives argue the farming is kinder and safer than traditional family farming. "Our larger operations in Wisconsin have very strict biosecurity policies in place to prevent transmission of disease," said Tammy Vaassen, director of operations for the Wisconsin Pork Association, based in Lancaster. Vaassen said that employees, for example, must shower and wear special clothing and boots before they can enter the facilities where hogs are housed. No outside visitors are permitted to enter the barns in an effort to reduce the chances for transmission of diseases, she said.

Nationally, Wisconsin ranks about 17th in total hog production in the U.S. In 2007, Vaassen said, about 900,000 hogs were marketed in the state. About 50 hog farms in Wisconsin have an inventory of over 2,000 hogs, she said, which amounts to about 38 percent of the state's total production.

Wisconsin has far fewer of these massive operations than its neighbors, said Gordon Stevenson, chief of runoff management for the DNR. Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Indiana are among the top five hog producers in the country. Stevenson is a staunch defender of the operations his agency regulates. "I would be hard pressed to say that the swine CAFO would pose any greater risk than a pork operation of any size," he said. "In fact, there may be some reason to believe that the smaller producers without biological controls in place could present a greater hazard."

Yet cheap labor, abundant space, and less community resistance have been luring livestock operators from Wisconsin and other states to places like Mexico, where there is much less regulatory oversight ndsh and, where, a 5-year-old boy named Edgar Hernandez, who lives in the village of La Gloria near a factory hog farm owned in part by the American giant Smithfield, became the first known case of an influenza world health officials now predict will become a pandemic.

Comments attributed to Christopher Olsen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of public health in the School of Veterinary Medicine, in an earlier version of this story were taken out of context in a news release distributed by the Humane Society of the United States. Olsen says the Humane Society did not contact him in relation to the press release.

Shawn Doherty  —  5/04/2009 4:10 pm