Avian Flu

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.

Chapter 27: PANZOOTIC, page 259.      Previous  |  Home   |  Next

For more information, see MeatClimateChange.org

Climate Reality Leader

At the end of August, 2018, we spent three days at The Climate Reality Project training in Los Angeles, lead by former Vice-President Al Gore. The information-packed training was well-organized and attended by over 2,200 new trainees from 40 countries. There were several sessions on the climate crisis and solutions, including those adopted by California. Al Gore made a powerful 2 1/2 hour slideshow presentation on the first day of the event, and a 10-minute version of the same slideshow on the last day. Gore's presentations included several extreme climate events that occurred in July and August 2018.

Interestingly, the climate literacy and outreach training was underfunded by Alan Horn, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, who spoke on day three of the conference. Horn noted that one day this summer, as he got into his car in Los Angeles, the temperature gauge in his Tesla electric vehicle read 118 degrees Fahrenheit. And Gore revealed that one of his billionaire friends lost his home in a recent California fire. Climate change is affecting the rich, and some are realizing that their vast wealth may not be able to insulate their grandchildren from its worsening effects.

One of the most notable speakers was leading climate scientist, Prof. V Ramannathan of  Scripps Institute, who released a peer-reviewed study three months ago warning that Earth was facing an existential crisis. The leading climatologist noted that when he presented the paper at a recent conference in Europe, he expected some push-back from the conservative scientific community. However, to his surprise, not one person said anything. In private, other scientists admitted to Ramannathan that they had reached the same conclusion as well.

One of the most important takeaways from the event was understanding how the climate crisis and equity issues are inter-related. Environmental racism is structural, systemic and planned since polluting industries are usually located in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Minority communities are on the frontlines of the fossil fuel industry, and are dealing with its effects all day, year round. They need help, but the green movement has largely ignored issues facing minorities in the inner cities. Consequently, environmental injustices have become normalized, and even impacted communities view negative health effects as inevitable. Sadly, African American children suffer asthma at 10 times the rate of European American children, part of the collateral damage of the fossil-fuel economy.

We were especially moved by the story of 17-year old Nalleli Cobo, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, next to an oil well. As a child, Nalleli was sickly and suffered from asthma. When she was nine years old, Nalleli grew tired on being sick and suffering from toxic air pollution caused by the oil well and started to organize others in her community to resist the oil company. They group gained support from local environmental organizations and eventually were able to get the well shut down.

By shutting down one oil well, Nalleli and others in her community effected change that improved their health and lowered greenhouse emissions that impacts all of us. Nalleli proves that when we act locally, we can have global impacts. The zero hour for young people is now. We must act to help Nalleli and all children from being condemned to a living hell in hothouse Earth. We must do all we can to reduce, reuse, and recycle, travel less, eat plant-based foods, and lower our carbon footprints. Even if there is little or no chance for success, we must persevere. Our children deserve no less.

Ambedkar King Study Circle Annual Conference 2018

Ambedkar King Study Circle Annual Conference 2018

Saturday, September 8 at 9 AM - 6 PM

20589 Homestead Rd, Cupertino, 

CA 95014-0450, United States

Details

Struggle and liberation of one oppressed group is tightly coupled with struggle and liberation of all oppressed groups, AKSC stands for such united struggle to liberate all the oppressed.

Thank you for all your overwhelming support for AKSC activities and programs for the past two years. We hold an annual conference to debate and discuss and formulate the right strategy and tactics to advance our program in the coming years.

Speaker and Session page: https://akscusa.org/aksc-annual-conference-2018
Registration Page:https://tinyurl.com/ClickAKSC2018
Contacts: 831-200-3282 , 415-683-0525 and 408-307-8913e-mail: akscsfba@gmail.com

Carnism and Climate Justice

Carnism and Climate Justice

by Moses Seenarine, 01/16/18

Inclusive wealth is the sum of a community's capital assets, including natural assets like fish or trees, but also human health and education, as well as built assets like roads, buildings and factories. A changing climate can reallocate natural capital, change the value of all forms of capital, and lead to mass redistribution of wealth.

"Inclusive wealth" is shifting out of the temperate zones and toward the poles as global temperatures rise. Climate change is thus taking inclusive wealth from the poor and giving to the rich. This reallocation of resources from the global South to the global North should be an essential part of climate justice.

Climate justice advocates view planetary heating as an ethical issue and scrutinize how its causes and effects relate to concepts of justice, particularly environmental justice and social justice. Climate justice is a struggle over land, forest, water, culture, food sovereignty, collective and social rights. It is a struggle that considers “justice” at the basis of any solution. This can mean examining issues such as equality, human rights, collective rights and historical responsibility in relation to environmental degradation and climate warming. Recognizing the fact that those least responsible for climate chaos will experience its greatest impacts is central to climate justice.

Advocates point out that there are racial and class differences in responses to social and environmental disasters, like with Hurricane Katrina in 2006. Katrina culminated in the displacement of 400,000 individuals along the US Gulf Coast and disproportionately affected low-income and minority victims. The groups most vulnerable to the Katrina disaster were the poor, black, brown, elderly, sick, and homeless. Similarly, when Superstorm Sandy hit New York in 2012, 33% of individuals in the storm surge area lived in government-assisted housing, and half of the 40,000 public housing residents of the city were displaced.

Katrina, Sandy, and other disasters show that climate inequalities are horizontal as well as vertical. For example, (i) women face greater endangerment than men; (ii) rural communities are exposed to a larger extent than urban ones; and (iii) groups marginalized because of class, race, ethnicity, migration and other factors are likely to be disproportionately affected.

The global livestock sector is part of the reallocation of the global South's resources to the global North. The food animal industry is a slower and less noticeable environmental disaster than a hurricane, but it is more widespread and involves far greater forms of human and nonhuman animal oppression. Loss of land rights, indigenous dispossession, trafficking and sexual oppression are part and parcel of the livestock sector, so food animal production and consumption are essential climate justice issues. 

Excerpt from "Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming," by Dr. Moses Seenarine, [ http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC ]

Where the Left Turns Right: Carnism and Colonialism

Where the Left Turns Right: Carnism and Colonialism

by Moses Seenarine, 01/16/18

Livestock is related to colonialism, racism, and classism. Geologist Tony Weis in his book, The Ecological Hoofprint - The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock, explains how the growth and industrialization of livestock production were instrumental to European colonialism and imperialism, and to worsening human inequality in the present. For centuries, over the course of European colonial domination and expansion worldwide, livestock production enlarged through intention and accident.

Livestock was a profound part of European conquest of thousands of indigenous groups, and their subsequent extraction and under-development policies on local lands. From mining and logging to plantations and trade, livestock was instrumental in land dispossession, indigenous genocide, extraction of minerals, and ecological disaster. In Brazil and elsewhere, the growth of cattle facilitated the colonial economy's expansion into the forests and indigenous communities, and continues to do so in the present-day. 

Unequal consumption of animal-based foods was a critical aspect of colonialism, class differentiation and white supremacy. Eating animal carcass was a prized demonstration of class status in England, first among the nobility and later for emergent capitalist elites. And, progressively, consumption of animal flesh became a strong working class aspiration as well. Across Europe and the globe, progressively, flesh intake's marker of class and privilege is linked to social oppression. By way of illustration, one researcher shows how by exploiting Irish and Scottish workers and land, carcass intake in England was able to dwarf that of the rest of Europe well into the 19th century. 

Sociologist David Nibert centers his analysis on nomadic pastoralism and the development of commercial ranching, and he shows how this practice was largely controlled by elite groups with the rise of capitalism. Nibert links domestication to some of the most critical issues facing the world today, like the depletion of fresh water, topsoil, and oil reserves, global warming, and world hunger. Similar to Weis, Nibert argues that animal-based exploitation was central to the expansion of capitalism and economic elites. 

Nibert explicates four critical connections: (i) the military use of domesticated animals in agrarian society; (ii) livestock's role in the Spanish invasion of the Philippines; (iii) domesticates and indigenous displacement; and (iv) the reign of “cattle kings” in the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America. 

Rural displacement is commonplace in the industry. In the 1950s, only 25% of the population in Latin America lived in urban areas. This number grew to 40% by the 1980s. And, over this period, the number of landless campesinos more than tripled. By 2007, around 77% of the population were living in urban areas. 

Nibert further links domesticated animals with depletion of finite resources and conflicts at regional and international levels in the present. And, he probes how exploding animal-based food intake is leading to a pandemic of chronic diseases and creates the potential for a global influenza pandemic that may disproportionately affect the poor and disadvantaged.

Excerpt from "Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming," by Dr. Moses Seenarine, [ http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC ]

Eating Responsibly: Meat Causes Food Insecurity

Eating Responsibly: Meat Causes Food Insecurity

by Moses Seenarine, 1/12/18

The modern practice of animal-based agribusiness has implications for food security, inequality, and human health. Humans produce enough calories in the world to feed everyone, even with an accretionary global population. Still and all, according to the UN, around one in eight people in the world is severely malnourished or lack access to food, due to poverty and high food prices. 

While 91% of farmers in the US have crop insurance to cover losses in the event of extreme weather, only 15% of farmers in India are covered. In China, only around 10% of farmers have crop insurance, and just 1% or less in Malawi and most low-income countries. Food security and food sustainability are on a collision course. Reversing direction to avoid this major counterpoint will require extreme downward shifts by large segments of the world's population in their intake of animal carcass, chicken eggs, cow's milk and seafood. 

Given current and future crop projections under a warmer climate, it is wasteful to use highly productive croplands to produce animal feed since this is conducive to exhausting the world's food supply. According to one study, “80 percent of the world’s starving children live in countries where food surpluses are fed to animal that are then killed and eaten by more well-off individuals in developed countries.” 

Similarly, an advocate for dietary change pointed out, “Intensive meat production isn’t just torture for animals. It destroys the environment, and devours great chunks of our raw materials which we import from the global South as animal feed.” This plant-based advocate continued, “Argentina and Brazil are dramatically increasing their soy cultivation, and it's being fed almost exclusively to the animals we slaughter, forcing up land prices. Small farmers are losing their land and livelihoods. That schnitzel on our plates jeopardizes the food security of many people in the global South.” 

Food waste is another mountainous issue since 30% to 50% of food is wasted worldwide. Waste negatively affects global food availability, especially in the US, China, and India. Reducing food waste in these three countries alone could yield food for upwards of 400 million people.

Excerpt from "Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming," by Dr. Moses Seenarine, [ http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC ]

Eating 'Rich': Class and Diet

Eating 'Rich': Class and Diet

by Moses Seenarine 1/10/18

Food security is a problem of distribution, not just production. Around 17% of densely populated India is undernourished, even though per capita flesh consumption is relatively low. In contrast, fewer than 5% of people in the US, where 22% of the world’s cattle is raised, are at risk of going hungry. 

Overall, the clear trend globally is for rising animal consumption among the urban middle class. Eating animal-based meals is a status symbol. Even with India's religious prohibitions and cultural politics against the eating of cow flesh, 'non-veg' has become a status symbol in the thriving cities. On top of this, across the world, people typically eat animals as part of a feast, holiday or celebration. School cafeterias serve animal carcass every day with few plant-based offerings, raising expectations for a daily dose of flesh. 

Even though plants are cheaper, a high-pressure, fast food lifestyle is causing adults to lose their taste for vegetables, and they are forgetting how to cook them. The economic gap between developed and developing countries is reflected in their animal consumption. While people in developed countries fulfill upwards of half, 56%, of their protein needs from animal sources, people in developing countries obtain only 18% in this way. 

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS, are five big developing countries. Economic growth in the BRICS is reflected in their animal consumption, and together, they account for 40% of the world’s population. Between 2003 and 2012, BRICS animal consumption rose by 6.3% a year and is expected to rise by another 2.5% a year between 2013 and 2022. 

The upsurge in carnism is due to the expansion in poultry consumption worldwide. Cow carcass is the one category that on a worldwide level showed no gain in consumption levels from 1970-2000. This trend reflects the fact that while cattle consumption rose in developing countries such as China and Brazil, it fell modestly in North America, Oceania, and Europe. 

Chicken consumption in China and India is determined by lifestyle to a larger extent than by population growth. Similarly, in Russia, the world’s biggest cow carcass importer, demand depends on prosperity from oil and gas export revenues, since the population peaked in 1991 at around 150 million. While animal carcass is cheap in Brazil, it is expensive in South Africa. Several economic crises in South Africa have ensured that the rising demand for animal flesh is almost entirely limited to cheaper chicken carcass. 

Between 2005 and 2050, food demand may soar 60 to 100% higher than the FAO's estimate of 50% from 2005/2007 levels. There are many uncertainties, but food projections are more sensitive to socio-economic assumptions than to climate warming or bioenergy scenarios. With higher population and lower economic growth, food consumption per capita drops on average by 10% for crops and 20% for livestock. This shows that a consumption tax on food animals can greatly lower livestock intake and associated climate-altering gases.

Excerpt from "Meat Climate Change: The 2nd Leading Cause of Global Warming," by Dr. Moses Seenarine, [ http://amzn.to/2yn7XrC ]