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Pandemics Ahead is a series of articles looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters. The articles are excerpts from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages. ISBN: 0692641157. http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
See also Meat Society, a series exploring issues related to curbing demand for animal products, an important climate change solution for individuals and nations alike, especially in Western states where meat and diary consumption dwarfs other regions. See also our COVID-19 Meat Pandemic Bibliography with a categorized listing of Online News and Reports (March to June, 2020).
Pandemics Ahead: Number 12 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.
Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages. ISBN: 0692641157. http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
Looking at records for the month of September 2014 alone, there were tens of thousands of dead fish in rivers, ponds, lakes and streams. Around the world, on almost every day of the month, fish kills were reported. On many days, multiple fish kills were recorded.(933)
On the 1st of September, 2014, there were two fish kills reported: thousands of dead fish washed ashore on a beach in Mohammedia, Morocco; and a large mass of fish floated in a river in China. On the 6th, there were three fish kills reported: a mass die off of fish in a river in China; hundreds of dead fish on a beach in Alicante, Spain; and 7 tons of fish dead in a lake in Sabaudia, Italy.
On September 12, 2014, there were three fish kills: large amounts of dead and 'sick' fish in the Baltic sea off coast of Sweden, Finland and Germany; thousands of dead fish washed up, 'the first of it's kind' along the coast of Qatif, Saudi Arabia; and thousands of fish died 'due to chemical pollution' in a lake in South Carolina, America.
On the 22nd of September, 2014, there were five fish kills: (i) a large fish kill in Valenzuela City, Philippines; (ii) a mass fish kill in Kuwait Bay, Kuwait; (iii) hundreds of dead fish floating in a river in Bejaia, Algeria; (iv) hundreds of dead fish in a canal in Pontedera, Italy; and (v) thousands of fish washed up dead in Central Java, Indonesia.
On September 30th, 2014, there were four fish kills reported: (a) hundreds of fish dead in Yosemite Lake 'due to rain' in California; (b) hundreds of fish floating in a canal in Hermosillo, Mexico; (c) a mass die off of fish in a channel in Sakarya, Turkey; and (d) hundreds of dead fish floating on a lake in Tours, France.
In the US, there were numerous fish kills during the month of September 2014 as well. For instance, (i) on the 2nd, hundreds of dead fish washed ashore in Pinellas County, Florida; (ii) on the 3rd, tens of thousands of dead fish washed up along the Neuse River in North Carolina; and (iii) on the 11th, hundreds of thousands of fish died in a creek in Iowa.
On 12th September, (iv) thousands of fish died 'due to chemical pollution' in a lake in South Carolina; (v) on the 17th, hundreds of pounds of fish died in a lake 'due to herbicides' in Illinois; (vii) on the 29th, hundreds of fish were killed in a lake in Texas; and (viii) on the 30th, hundreds of fish died in Yosemite Lake 'due to rain' in California.
The repercussion of fish kills include biodiversity loss, extra greenhouse (GHG) pollution, and negative effects on human health. But the climate-altering gases related to the livestock waste, eutrophication, disposal of fish-kills, and effects on human health, are either ignored and uncounted.
Pandemics Ahead: Number 11 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.
Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages. ISBN: 0692641157. http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
The manure from factory farms contains ammonia which is highly toxic to fish at low levels. Escalating the amounts of manure and nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus from livestock production, can cause algal blooms which block waterways and deplete oxygen as they decompose. This often kills fish and other aquatic organisms, devastating the entire aquatic food chain.(929)
The concentration of nitrate in the ground water supply can reach unhealthy levels. Infants up to three months of age are especially susceptible to high nitrate levels and may develop Blue Baby Syndrome (methemoglobinemia), an often fatal blood disorder.(930) In 1996, the CDC established a link between spontaneous abortions and high nitrate levels in Indiana drinking water wells located close to feedlots.
Almost all the US feed production and industrial farms are concentrated along the Mississippi River basin. A liter of seawater commonly holds around 7 milligrams of dissolved oxygen, but around the mouths of the Mississippi, it holds less than 2 milligrams. The only organisms active here are those that do not depend on oxygen to live. Most summers, between 13,000 to 20,000 sq km (5,000-7,700 sq mi) of sea at the mouth of the Mississippi becomes a "dead zone."(931)
Nearly 400 dead zones ranging in size from one to over 70,000 sq km (27,000 sq mi) have been identified, from the Scandinavian fjords to the South China Sea. Animal farming is not the only cause, but it is one of the worst. In Asia, pig and chicken feed farms in coastal China, Vietnam, and Thailand regularly pollute the South China Sea. The northern part of the Caspian Sea is loaded with nitrogen that comes down the Volga. Many of the seas surrounding Europe are affected - the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Irish Sea, the Spanish coast, and the Adriatic, all have dead zones.
Not all algal blooms are toxic, but some kinds of algae do produce toxins, such as domoic acid, which is a powerful and fatal neurotoxin. Toxic algal blooms impact the lowest levels of the food chain first, in shellfish and feeder fish that larger marine animals feed on. Even if the toxins do not kill the larger marine animals, toxic algal blooms can wipe out lower levels of the marine food chain and decimate supplies of food that larger marine animals rely on.
Climate change may encourage longer and more frequent blooms of toxic algae along Canada's Pacific coast, impacting marine communities as far north as Alaska with much more consistency than in the past. This is because algae thrive in warmer waters, which both encourage growth in certain kinds of algae and discourage a mixing of ocean waters. And Alaskan waters are some of the most rapidly warming waters in the world, having risen by 3 degrees C in the past decade.(932)
Pandemics Ahead: Number 10 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.
Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages. ISBN: 0692641157. http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
According to the US EPA, food animal waste has polluted in excess of 27,000 miles of rivers and contaminated groundwater in dozens of states. In addition, the EPA determined that nitrate is the most widespread agricultural contaminant in drinking water wells, and estimates that 4.5 million people are exposed to elevated nitrate levels from wells.(923)
Tens of thousands of miles of rivers in the US, Europe, and Asia are polluted each year. In the US, approximately 40% of fresh water is deemed unfit for drinking or recreational use because of contamination by dangerous microorganisms, pesticides, and fertilizers. Upwards of 40 diseases can be transferred to humans through manure. Each year, waterborne diseases cause 940,000 infections and 900 deaths. And, pathogenic Escherichia coli and related food-borne pathogens account for 76 million infections and 5,000 deaths.(924)
Also, using human waste as fertilizer might be making humans infertile. Eating flesh from animals grazed on land treated with commonly-used “human sewage sludge-derived fertilizer” might have serious implications for pregnant women and the future reproductive health of their unborn children. Chemical contaminants in human-based manure can mimic sex hormones and disrupt ovary development, with the potential for long-term damage to adult female fertility.(925)
After a severe rainstorm in 1993, an outbreak of cryptosporidium in Milwaukee's drinking water supply caused 100 deaths, sickened 430,000 people, and produced $37 million in lost wages and productivity. Runoff of chicken and hog waste from factory farms in Maryland and North Carolina may have spawned outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, killing millions of fish and causing skin irritation, short-term memory loss, and other cognitive problems in local people.(926)
In 1995 an eight-acre pig-waste lagoon in North Carolina burst, spilling 25 million gallons (9.4m liters) of manure into the New River. The spill killed about 10 million fish and closed 364,000 acres (570 sq mi) of coastal wetlands. In 2011, an Illinois pig farm spilled 200,000 gallons (757,000 liters) of manure into a creek, killing over 110,000 fish.(927)
In February 2014, in Michigan’s Allegan County, a storm-water system failure at a cow milk farm with a 1-million-gallon (3.8m liters) manure lagoon spilled manure into nearby waterways, creating a visible plume five miles (8 km) long. In Canton, Minnesota, a wall on an above-ground manure storage tank broke in April 2013, spilling roughly 1 million gallons of manure.
In one of the largest cases of manure pollution, an estimated 15 million gallons (57m liters) of manure, water, and other matter spilled in 2010 into a slough that drains into the Snohomish River in Washington state, when a berm on a cow's milk farm’s manure lagoon failed. In 2005, 3 million gallons (11m liters) of manure spilled from a New York cow milk farm into a river, killing thousands of fish.
Pandemics Ahead: Number 9 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.
Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages. ISBN: 0692641157. http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
Animal-based agribusiness generates a lot of manure and excretions that decompose and turns into greenhouse gasses (GHGs) and cause disease. Lagoons and spray-fields are the most common methods that concentrated animal feed operations (CAFOs) use for dealing with animal waste, or sludge. Farms generally collect waste from the area containing a concentrated number of animals and store it, untreated, in huge open-air waste lagoons, often as big as several football fields, and holding as many as 40 million gallons.
The quantity of livestock manure and other wastes produced each year in the US is vast, estimated to be 1.5 bTons. A single cow raised for milk excretes around 88 lbs (40 kg) of manure for every kilogram of edible cow flesh it puts on. Each cow produces approximately 120 lbs (54 kg) of wet manure per day, equal to that of 20 - 40 people. Disposing of billions of gallons of sludge is a serious environmental issue.(918)
A farm with 2,500 cows raised for milk produces the same volume of waste as a city of 411,000 people. The massive waste lagoons often break, leak or overflow, polluting underground water supplies and rivers with nitrogen, phosphorus, and nitrates. In recent decades, livestock production systems have moved closer to urban areas, causing water and food to be frequently contaminated with manure.(919)
Some of the sludge are applied at agronomic rates as fertilizer onto land called spray-fields. Agronomic rates provide nitrogen for vegetation growth while minimizing the quantity that passes below the root zone. However, factory farms have superfluous quantities of sludge and routinely spray excess amounts on fields which leeches out and damages the environment. Industrial animal agriculture is the largest sectoral source of water pollutants which includes fertilizers, pesticides, animal wastes, antibiotics, and hormones. To boot, the sector is responsible for water pollution from chemicals in tanneries and sediments from eroded pastures.
Animal waste can contain pathogens like Giardia and Cryptosporidium, as well as heavy metals. Excess sludge sprayed on fields can contaminate food crops meant for humans and lead to disease outbreaks. Manure contamination often result in Listeria outbreaks on fruits and vegetables. Medical treatment generates further CO2 pollution and other problems. For example, the cost of cleaning up the soil under US hog and dairy CAFOs could approach US$4.1 billion.(920)
The manure problem from factory farms will only worsen with intensification and expansion. And, wastage of food represents another huge loss to the environment, and to the animals themselves. Waste chemicals often seep from lagoons and spray-fields into groundwater, streams, and wetlands, and contaminate drinking water. In addition to numerous adverse effects on human health, contaminated runoff and spills are causing dead zones and fish kills.(921)
The volume of antibiotics being used on factory farms pose serious hazards to public and environmental health as well. Antibiotic residue is conducive to antibiotic resistance in pathogens that cause illness in people.(922) In the US alone, animal agriculture consumes 29 million pounds of antibiotics, about 80% of the nation's antibiotics use in total. The effects of pollution on biodiversity from antibiotics are largely unknown. One concern is that some wells and waterways have tested positively for estrogenic and endocrine-disrupting compounds.
One pending lawsuit alleges that manure spreading by five large dairies has caused nitrate and other contamination of groundwater, and violates the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The plaintiffs contend that the way the manure is being applied is the equivalent of dumping solid waste. This activity is covered by RCRA but it has not been applied to manure spreading.
Pandemics Ahead: Number 8 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.
Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages. ISBN: 0692641157. http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
One aspect of the livestock-wildlife interface is zoonotic disease, which is a disease that can be passed between animals and humans. Disease is largely an environmental issue. Around 60% of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonotic, and over two-thirds of those originate in wildlife. For instance, AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more.(883)
Many zoonotic diseases have a wildlife reservoir that acts as an impediment to eradication in domesticated populations. For example, rabies, bovine tuberculosis, paratuberculosis, brucellosis, avian flu, and cattle fever tick.(884) Bovine tuberculosis is due to Mycobacterium bovis, a worldwide zoonotic disease carried by cattle and ingested by humans via milk and carcass. M. bovis has infected wildlife as well, including cervids in North America, badgers in the UK, possums in New Zealand, buffalo in South Africa, and feral pigs in Europe.(885)
In Malaysia, pigs are exposed to fruit bats infected with Nipah virus. The virus can rapidly spread through the country’s pig population, certainly through trade and possibly between farms by dogs and cats. Humans in direct contact with pigs can then acquire the infection and its often-fatal encephalitis.(886)
Wildlife can also serve as vectors for nonzoonotic diseases of food animals. The problem is exacerbated by how livestock are kept in poor countries, which can magnify diseases borne by wild animals. Over two million people a year are killed by diseases that spread to humans from wild and domestic animals.(887)
Domesticates are inadvertently leading to extinction of wildlife. A pneumonia outbreak in 2010 killed 65 of the critically endangered markhor goat in Tajikistan, as much as 20 percent of the remaining population. The markhors contracted the disease for domestic goats.(888)
Pandemics Ahead: Number 5 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.
Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157) http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
In the UK, up to 19 million broiler chickens die in their sheds each year from heart failure. In the case of no ventilation due to a power failure during a heat wave, upwards of 20,000 chickens can die in a short period of time.(998) Chickens are susceptible to several parasites, like lice, mites, ticks, fleas, and intestinal worms, as well as other diseases.(999)
In epizoology, an epizootic is a disease that appears as new cases in a given animal population, during a given period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is "expected" based on recent experience. That is, an epizootic represents a sharp elevation in the incidence rate. In contrast to an epizootic, common diseases that occur at a constant but relatively high rate in the population are said to be "enzootic,” like influenza virus in some bird populations. An epidemic is the analogous term applied to human populations. High population density is a major contributing factor to epizootics and vast amounts of antibiotics are used to keep diseases at bay in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operation), with varying success.
These are dozens of common diseases that affect chickens, including (i) Avian influenza or bird flu, a virus; (ii) Histomoniasis or Blackhead disease, a protozoal parasite; and (iii) Botulism, a toxin. There is also (iv) Campylobacteriosis caused by tissue injury in the gut; (v) Coccidiosis, a parasite; (vi) Dermanyssus gallinae or red mite, a parasite; (vii) Erysipelas, a bacteria; and (viii) Fatty Liver Hemorrhagic Syndrome caused by high-energy food.
Besides, there is (ix) Fowl Cholera; (x) Fowl pox; (xi) Fowl Typhoid; (xii) Infectious Bronchitis, a virus; (xiii) Infectious Coryza, a bacteria; and (xiv) Necrotic Enteritis, a bacteria. In addition, there is (xv) Peritonitis caused by infection in abdomen from egg yolk; (xvi) Prolapse; (xvii) Pullorum or Salmonella, a bacteria; (xviii) Squamous cell carcinoma, cancer; (xix) Toxoplasmosis, protozoal parasite; (xx) Ulcerative Enteritis, a bacteria; and numerous others.
Diseases are critical to each individual food animal's health, as well as the industry overall because they often affect an animal's efficiency at converting feed to protein. These diseases can severely affect an animal's diet and efficiency. They can infect wild populations or jump the species barrier and infect humans and other nonhuman animals. Infections may lead to medical intervention, loss of the bird, and/or spread of disease, which proliferates GHG (greenhouse gas) pollution.
Pandemics Ahead: Number 2 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.
Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157) http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
Chicken, once a distant third to cattle and pig carcass, is now the most popular animal flesh in the US. The average American eats almost 84 pounds of chicken a year, more than twice the amount eaten in 1970. In 2007, 8.9 billion chickens were raised and sold as food in the US, a remarkable jump of more than 1,400% since 1950.(996)
Chicken farms have mushroomed in size. In 2006, a typical broiler operation produced an average of 605,000 birds in vast buildings of 20,000 square feet or more. Meanwhile, the number of individual farms raising chickens for food has plummeted by 98% in just 50 years. The industrialization and consolidation of the chicken business in the US have concentrated production in the 'Broiler Belt.' In this area, which extends from eastern Texas through the southeastern US and north to Maryland and Delaware, chickens outnumber people by as much as 400 to 1.
The waste produced by these concentrated poultry operations raises serious concerns about treatment and disposal, particularly along the shores of the largest estuary system in the US, the Chesapeake Bay. The 523 million chickens produced each year in just Maryland and Delaware generate roughly 42 million cubic feet (1.2bn liter) of chicken waste, enough to fill the dome of the US Capitol about 50 times, or almost once a week.
Industrial chicken production is the fastest growing and most quickly transforming segment of the highly globalized livestock industry. In 2010, there were 20 billion chickens, making them the world’s most numerous bird species By 2020, 124 million tonnes (273 billion lb) of chicken will be produced globally – a spike of 25% in just 10 years.
China’s production enlargement will be highest, a 37% upsurge compared to 2010. Brazil will be close behind at 28%. Below-average growth is forecast for the USA, at 16%, and the EU, at 4%.(997) The most striking climb in demand for chicken will take place in South Asia, where it is expected to jump greater than seven-fold by 2050. This extraordinary expansion is fueled by demand in India, where consumption is expected to climb nearly ten-fold, from 1.05mt to 9.92mt (2.3 billion to 21.8 billion lb) a year.
According to the FAO, this is due to rising per capita consumption rather than the growing human population. Most growth in demand comes from urban areas - double that in rural regions. Nevertheless, animal consumption in India is relatively small and per person it is less than one-tenth of the quantity consumed in China.
People prefer chicken to other types of carcass for many reasons, such as lower price and cultural preference. Producing chicken is cheaper than other types of domesticates, although disease and culling are widespread and growing. The cost of chicken production will rise along with feed, but chickens are more efficient feed converters than other livestock.
Unlike cow carcass and pig flesh, there are few religious or cultural limitations to eating chicken. Plus, food animal consumption is expected to rise in countries where people culturally prefer eating chicken. As a result, production facilities and processing will become increasingly concentrated with attendant panzootic risks.
In December 2012, Chinese national television exposed the “instant chicken” scandal associated with Liuhe, one of the country’s top chicken producers. Liuhe is a subsidiary of New Hope, the biggest feed company in China and one of the largest in the world. As many as 18 antibiotics were discovered in “cocktails” mixed into the feed to accelerate the growth of broilers. These birds could grow from 30 grams (1 oz) to 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) in a matter of 40 days.
Liuhe is one of KFC’s major suppliers. Repercussions from the scandal forced Yum Brands, KFC’s parent company, to admit that excessive drug residues had been observed in “some” chicken supplied by Liuhe in 2010. The scandal caused widespread outrage in the Chinese media, and KFC’s sales plunged. KFC responded by exerting further controls over its supply chain. The animal-processing company now owns all the inputs, controls the land and water resources, and employs the workers who produce the chickens, essentially turning farms into factories.
China is intensifying its chicken production, despite the widespread emergence of avian flu. First detected in 1996 in farmed geese in southern China, this disease has since spread to 60 countries. Since 2004, China has reported avian flu outbreaks every year except 2011.
Pandemics Ahead: Number 1 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.
Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157) http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
In 1906, Upton Sinclair's seminal book, The Jungle, first brought the shocking details of the animal industry to the forefront of US national attention. A national outcry prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to task the USDA with the inspection of animal carcasses and slaughterhouses.(988) When Congress first addressed food safety issues, it concentrated on the meat processing industry with the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 that required meat processing to be continuously inspected. The US food processing sector is now extensively regulated by state and federal agencies.
The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 (FSMA) was signed into law by President Obama on January 4, 2011. The law grants FDA a number of new powers, like mandatory recall authority, which the agency has sought for many years. Notably, federal law still does not prohibit the sale of animal-based products that are infected with pathogens. In particular, it is not illegal for TFCs (transnational food corporations) to sell chicken products polluted with salmonella. Oddly, the USDA does not have the authority to shut down an animal-based agribusiness that fails too many tests. It can only step up inspections.
The USDA has pledged repeatedly to set limits for the most dangerous pathogens, salmonella and campylobacter, in animal-based products. Salmonella and campylobacter live in the guts of animals and can contaminate raw flesh when animals are slaughtered. The USDA's current expectation is that less than 44.6% of a plant’s ground chicken and 49.9% of a plant’s ground turkey should be infected with Salmonella.(989) This means around half of the total animal carcass production can be dangerously toxic and still be approved for consumption.
On January 21, 2015, the USDA finally proposed new testing standards for chicken and turkey aimed at reducing rates of salmonella and other bacteria. The proposed rules aim to reduce contaminant levels by about half, to 25% of tested samples.(990) This is still a dangerous amount of bacteria.
The USDA is not requiring chicken processors to take specific steps to reduce dangerous pathogens in their products. Instead, it is proposing limits on the number of chicken samples that can test positive for salmonella and campylobacter before a facility is deemed to have failed the standards. One of the agency's pilot program allows pig carcass producers to ramp up the speed of processing lines by 20% and cut the number of USDA safety inspectors at each plant in half, replacing them with private inspectors. This program fails to stop contamination, and USDA has allowed other countries to use equivalent methods in plants producing red meat for export to the US.(991)
The USDA's own report determined that livestock “plants have repeatedly violated the same regulations with little or no consequence.” And that inspectors did not “take enforcement actions against plants that violated food safety regulations.”(992)
Meat recalls due to contamination have become so commonplace that when the USDA announced in 2008 the recall of 143 million pounds (65m kg) of ground cow carcass, the largest recall in history, it hardly sparked much interest. Around 50 million pounds (22m kg) of that cow flesh went into school lunches and federal food programs for the poor and elderly.(993)
Livestock production creates a multitude of health issues for people and animals. In the US, chicken products contaminated with pathogens such as Salmonella, cause a larger number of deaths than any other food product.(994) Numerous illnesses can quickly become life-threatening for food animals trapped in CAFOs (concentrated animal feed operation), and can spread rapidly under massed confinement.(995)
Pandemics Ahead: Number 3 in a series looking at the link between animal protein and global health disasters.
Excerpt from Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming by Moses Seenarine, (2016). Xpyr Press, 348 pages ISBN: 0692641157) http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial chicken practices. Intensified stocking rates enhance the danger that crowded conditions in chicken farms will allow avian influenza to spread quickly. Waterfowl such as wild ducks are thought to be primary hosts for all bird flu subtypes. Though normally resistant to the viruses, the birds carry them in their intestines and distribute them through feces into the environment, where they infect susceptible domestic birds.(1001) Sick birds pass the viruses to healthy birds through saliva, nasal secretions, and feces. Within a single region, bird flu is transmitted readily from farm to farm via (a) airborne feces-contaminated dust and soil; (b) by contaminated clothing, feed, and equipment; or (c) by wild animals carrying the virus on their bodies. The disease is spread from region to region by migratory birds and through international trade in live birds. Humans who are in close contact with sick birds, like chicken farmers and slaughterhouse workers, are at the greatest danger of becoming infected. Besides chicken, virus-contaminated surfaces and intermediate hosts such as pigs can be sources of infection for humans.
According to the WHO, 622 people were infected with H5N1 between 2003 and 2013, and about 60% of those individuals died. The majority of human H5N1 infections and deaths occurred in Egypt, Indonesia, and Vietnam.(1002) Small outbreaks of bird flu caused by other subtypes of the virus have occurred in the past. A less severe form of disease associated with H7N7 was reported in the Netherlands in 2003, where it caused one human death but led to the culling of thousands of chickens. Since then the virus has been detected in the country on several occasions.
A Chinese vaccine was made with H5N1 antigens, but chickens still get infected. And there is drift when the virus mutates in response to the antibodies. Now there are five or six versions of H5N1. Keeping wild birds away from domestic birds help to lessen the spread of H5N1. In 2013, a strain of H7N9 capable of causing severe pneumonia and death emerged in China, with the first confirmed cases detected in February that year and dozens of others reported in the following months. It was the first H7N9 outbreak reported in humans.
The medical industry and scientific community recognize the danger. A UN press release states, "Governments, local authorities and international agencies need to take a greatly increased role in combating the role of factory-farming, commerce in live, and wildlife markets which provide ideal conditions for the virus to spread and mutate into a more dangerous form..." Still, doctors and bureaucrats may be powerless against the livestock industry.
Growth for Who? Defining Progress by Under-Counting the Hungry Masses
by Moses Seenarine, 12/15/17
Malnutrition affects one in every three people worldwide. It affects all age groups and populations, and plays a major role in half of the 10 million annual child deaths in the developing world. In the children who survive, malnutrition continues to be a cause and a consequence of disease and disability.
The most visible form of hunger is famine, a true food crisis in which multitudes of people in an area starve and die. There are over 850 million people who are chronically hungry. This is the largest number and proportion of malnourished people ever recorded in human history. Plus, being underweight is a major problem globally. A quarter of women in India and Bangladesh are underweight. And a fifth of men in India, Bangladesh, Timor, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Ethiopia are underweight. Being underweight put a person at risk for multiple health problems including anemia, infertility and osteoporosis.
In the entire developing world, or Global South, hunger and poverty are intense and may worsen as economic growth across the world stalls. From 2005 and 2008 food prices almost doubled. To make matters worse, from 2007, there has been a sizable slowdown in food aid, bringing hunger reduction "essentially to a halt for the developing countries as a whole."
As many as 2.8 billion people on the planet struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, and upwards of one billion people lack reasonable access to safe drinking water. There is an enormous and persistent food gap between the global South and the developed north. To illustrate, the average person in the industrial world took in 10% more calories daily in 1961 than the average person in the developing world consumes today. The large numbers of poor and malnourished people in the world are unacceptably high, but these numbers may be much higher due to under-counting.
Misleadingly, the UN set the threshold for hunger as the minimum calories needed for a "sedentary lifestyle." In reality, the number of hungry people could be as high as 1.5 billion, or in excess of 25% of the world's adult population if the threshold was set as the minimum needed for "normal activity." And numbers of the hungry would jump to 2.6 billion, or nearly 45% of the global adult population, for "intense activity."
Currently, 4.3 billion people live on less than $5 a day. Although this figure is higher than the World Bank poverty criteria at $1.25 a day, one report showed that a realistic poverty measure would be around $10 a day. By this standard, over three-quarter of humans live in poverty. One-fifth of the Earth's 7 billion people have no land and possessions at all. These "poorest of the poor" are non-literates lacking safe drinking water and living on less than a dollar a day.
Many spend about 80% of their earnings on food, but still they are hungry and malnourished. The average US house cat eats twice as much protein every day as one of the world's poorest of the poor, and the cost to care for each cat is greater than a poor person's annual income. Half of the world's population have enough food to provide energy, but suffer from individual nutrient deficiencies. Billions of people lack iron, iodine, vitamin A, and other vital nutrients. In addition, racial, ethnic, and religious hatred along with monetary greed cause food deprivation for whole groups of people.
The IPCC's AR5 report suggest that climate transformation will affect poor countries the most, and inflate food insecurity. While Oxfam predicts world hunger will worsen as planetary heating inevitably affects crop production and disrupt incomes. The number of people in the peril of hunger might climb by 10% to 20% by 2050, but daily per capita calorie availability is falling across the world.
I am a father, educator and activist. I would like to discuss how we can eat for surviving climate change by considering less as more. Climate change in happening right now and may get far worse in the near future. This year, 2017, is on track to be the hottest year on record. If it is, it will steal the record from 2016, even though this is not an El Nino year. Before 2016, the hottest year was 2015; before 2015, the hottest year was 2014, and so on. Do you notice the pattern here?
The Earth has already surpassed one degree Celsius rise in temperature from 1700 levels, and we're on track to go well beyond the 2C limit aimed for in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. The atmosphere now has more than 400 parts per million carbon dioxide, and the rate of increase is not slowing down. We may have already passed the point of safe return and it does not look good for my lifetime, and less so for my child. But giving up is not an option for either of us.
The good news is that it is not game over, yet. And since humans are the cause of climate change, we can also do something about it. For example, reducing our personal consumption is an effective way to minimize our greenhouse gas footprint. Each one of us have a new opportunity each day to make better choices in order to minimize our contribution to climate change. With education and awareness raising, it is possible to achieve significant reductions in emissions from diet, travel, and lifestyle. This is especially true for individuals in North America and Europe, who are by far the biggest consumers of energy, animal products, and cars in the world.
There is a tremendous upside to changing our over-consumption habits, and this alone should challenge each of us to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as we can each and every day. Less is more is so many ways, and we need to make conservation cool again. The less natural resources we consume in the present, is the more people will have access to in the future. The lower on the food chain that we consume with each meal, by eating plants instead of animals, the more biodiversity there will be to enjoy. Lower personal energy use, travel and meat intake equals less global heat, and reduced climate vulnerability.
Beyond the personal level, at the community and regional levels, one positive development is the ongoing transition to renewable energy. National policies are slowly shifting away from the use of fossil fuel in energy production and transportation. The 2015 Paris Climate Accord's target of two percent annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is a good start, and despite withdrawal by the American administration, most major cities and states are trying to do their part to lower US emissions. There is vast scope for improvement, and we are gradually turning the corner on the carbon economy and headed toward renewable energy.
The bad news is that even if individuals and countries cut down fossil fuel consumption to zero by 2050 or 2100, this will not stop global warming. Going 100 percent renewable will help to reduce greenhouse gas significantly, no doubt, but there is another ingredient in our consumption footprint that needs to be lowered as well.
That component is our diet, specifically greenhouse gases from animal production, which is around 15 percent of total emissions, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The footprint from our carnivorous habit is greater than transportation, including emissions from all cars, buses, boats and planes combined. Moreover, the FAO's 15 percent livestock figure exclude emissions from the seafood and pets industries, and deforestation. According to NASA, clearing land to raise livestock and feed crops is one of the leading causes of deforestation. So we are literally destroying the Earth’s lungs and precious ecosystems to raise farmed animals.
Like fossil fuel consumption, there has been a steady rise in meat intake, with attendant release of greenhouse gases. If fully accounted for, greenhouse gas from carnism may equal to that of energy production. But unlike efforts to limit the expansion of the carbon economy, the animal agriculture industry is promoted at all levels, while their emissions are being ignored by the scientific community and the popular media alike.
The farm animal industry produces more greenhouse gas than all of transportation, so it is not inconsequential. In addition to carbon dioxide, animal production emits half of the world’s emissions of methane, according to the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and the second major contributor to global warming.
Remarkably, emissions from farmed animals are excluded from the Paris Climate Accord, and global consumption is set to double by 2050. While it is critical for us to lower fossil fuel use in energy and transportation, unless these are accompanied by significant reductions in dietary emissions, humans will continue to drive catastrophic global warming.
Similar to the environmental and cultural devastation initiated by the production of oil tar sands in Canada, there are severe ecological consequences associated with animal production, including deforestation, habitat loss, species extinction, soil and water pollution, landlessness, poverty, disease, sickness and death. The impacts on soil, forests, and oceans reduces Earth's capacity for absorbing carbon dioxide and leads to even more rapid warming.
Soy is an important base ingredient of the world’s meat production, and approximately three quarters of the world’s soy goes to animal feed. Soy production has left an enormous scar on the Earth’s surface, more than 400,000 square miles (one million square kilometers), equivalent to the total combined area of France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Jaguars, giant anteaters, sloths and thousands of other creatures have been affected in Brazil and elsewhere.
Bolivia lost 430,000 hectares of forest per year over the previous decade. Although Bolivia is one of the least economically developed countries in South America, its greenhouse gas emissions levels per capita equal or exceed those of many European countries. More than 80 percent of those emissions come from deforestation. Alarmingly, crop yields are set to decline with rising temperatures, so more land and water will have to be used in the future to grow the same amount of animal feed.
Despite its importance, diet and personal consumption is so taboo that climate scientists and environmental activists rarely make reference to this topic. Take for example, Bill McKibben and 350.org, the leading climate advocacy group in the world. The organization has conducted dozens of climate campaigns, including a 100 percent renewable energy crusade, but they do not have a single program to address agricultural emissions. This is not surprising considering that environmental activists and green organizers are avid consumers of animal flesh so there is a huge conflict of interest present.
Al Gore's two movies on climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and “An Inconvenient Sequel,” have both omitted greenhouse gas emissions from carnism. Within mainstream climate activism, reducing demand for animal products is not presented as part of the solution. This view is short-sighted since the increasing dependence on animal products in diets worldwide is a major self-inflicted handicap in our capacity to successfully negotiate climate change. Maybe, instead of using vast amounts of water and land to grow crops to feed to animals, to then feed to people, if we just eat the crops instead we could save ourselves from hunger and global warming.
The scientific community is slowly coming around. James Hansen, former head of NASA and one of the world's most famous climate scientist is lead author of a 2017 article titled, "Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions." The paper admits that ruminant production is a concern and added, "we would be remiss if we did not point out the potential contribution of demand-side mitigation that can be achieved by individual actions as well as by government policies."
America’s addiction to cheap meat, fed on corn and soy in vast indoor factories, comes at a high cost in human health problems and environmental destruction. None of these costs are paid for by the companies that produce the meat and feed, such as Tyson, Cargill and ADM. If the costs of pollution, habitat destruction, losses to fisheries and tourism, climate change and impacts on human health were fully accounted for, meat would be a luxury food.
The era of climate migration is here and rather than building walls, nations have to cooperate for climate mitigation and disaster recovery. The climate crisis is a global one that demands a global response. We can devolve into nationalist xenophobia or combine our efforts in a more effective international response. This crisis requires individual change and collective action, and maintaining an acute awareness in every choice we make that less is more.
Published on April 15. Book Launch on May 1st, 2016
"Meat Climate Change: the 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming," by Moses Seenarine is a must-read, essential guidebook to climate and diet.
The guidebook includes an informative chapter on the 2015 Paris Agreement, and a vitally important chapter on climate change and health. The book examines in detail the impacts of climate change and diet on the poor, water, forests, soil, oceans, biodiversity and disease.
The book provides an excellent background on climate literacy, and great insights into climate politics. Importantly, it explores near term climate change scenarios to the year 2100, and necessary personal, social and policy changes for climate mitigation.
This book would be useful to anyone interested in learning about climate change, the environment, diet and health, social inequality, and animal-based agribusiness. It is addressed to the general public, educators, social and environmental activists, climate scientists and policy-makers.
