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CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories

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Junkdrawer

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:15 PM
Original message

CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in North Carolina.

...

The worst plague in human history was triggered by an H1N1 avian flu virus, which jumped the species barrier from birds to humans and went on to kill as many as 50 to 100 million people in the 1918 flu pandemic. No disease, war or famine ever killed so many people in so short a time. We then passed the virus to pigs, where it has continued to circulate, becoming one of the most common causes of respiratory disease on North American pig farms.

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell ill. A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple reassortment virus�a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus�that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.

Within months, the virus had spread throughout the United States. Blood samples taken from 4,382 pigs across 23 states found that 20.5% tested positive for exposure to this triple hybrid swine flu virus by early 1999, including 100% of herds tested in Illinois and Iowa, and 90% in Kansas and Oklahoma. According to the current analysis, it is from this pool of viruses that the current swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic material.

Tracing the Origins of Today's Virus

Since the progenitor of the swine flu virus currently threatening to trigger a human pandemic has now been identified, it is critical to explore what led to its original emergence and spread. Scientists postulate that a human flu virus may have starting circulating in U.S. pig farms as early as 1995, but "by mutation or simply by obtaining a critical density, caused disease in pigs and began to spread rapidly through swine herds in North America." It is therefore likely no coincidence that the virus emerged in North Carolina, the home of the nation�s largest pig production operation. North Carolina has the densest pig population in North America and reportedly boasts more than twice as many corporate pig mega-factories as any other state.

...

http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/swine_flu_virus_origin_1998_042909.html

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jsamuel

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:20 PM
Response to Original message

1. Note that they are talking about a swine version of the swine flu, not the human version

Edited on Thu Apr-30-09 04:21 PM by jsamuel

In other words, that the swine in NC were found to have a strain that likely was a precursor to the human strain.

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malaise

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:22 PM
Response to Reply #1

3. Note this

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell ill.<5> A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple reassortment virus�a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus�that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.<6>

Within months, the virus had spread throughout the United States. Blood samples taken from 4,382 pigs across 23 states found that 20.5% tested positive for exposure to this triple hybrid swine flu virus by early 1999, including 100% of herds tested in Illinois and Iowa, and 90% in Kansas and Oklahoma.<7> According to the current analysis, it is from this pool of viruses that the current swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic material.<8>

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Junkdrawer

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:22 PM
Response to Reply #1

4. But most of the mutations were there just waiting of the hog-to-human mutation...

Edited on Thu Apr-30-09 04:24 PM by Junkdrawer

I think there's now less and less doubt that Smithfield was the origin of this virus.

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malaise

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:23 PM
Response to Reply #4

6. Precisely n/t

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jsamuel

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:24 PM
Response to Reply #4

7. Don't get me wrong. I don't intend to defend Smithfield. I just want to make sure we don't get

confused.

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Stellabella

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:21 PM
Response to Original message

2. That makes perfect sense.

Thanks to Repukes for slashing the FDA and USDA and allowing factory farms to grow unheeded and unchecked. Notice that the warnings came during the Bush/Cheney debacle years?

We really are going to kill ourselves with stupidity and greed, aren't we?

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malaise

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:23 PM
Response to Reply #2

5. No doubt deregulation facilitated this

but NAFTA and even less regulations in Mexico and elsewhere were a deadly boost.

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Stellabella

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:30 PM
Response to Reply #5

8. Oh yes, I know.

I'm still upset with President Clinton for NAFTA.

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havocmom

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Fri May-01-09 08:23 AM
Response to Reply #5

29. Yep. Seems Mexico should have closed the border to protect themselves from us

I have long espoused the theory that US corporations move a lot of operations to Mexico to avoid environmental and worker protection laws. NAFTA should have addressed that and made such protections across borders part of the deal or not gone into law at all. We now have corporations basically setting laws in nations and the predictable results from such conditions.

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steven johnson

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:49 PM
Response to Original message

9. k&r!

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G_j

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Thu Apr-30-09 04:54 PM
Response to Original message

10. K&R

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Junkdrawer

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:03 PM
Response to Reply #10

11. BTW: G_j found the link...

Tip o' the hat...

:hi:

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damntexdem

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:11 PM
Response to Original message

12. NAFTA Flu! NAFTA Flu! NAFTA Flu!

Spread the true name. (But don't spread the flu!)

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nichomachus

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Fri May-01-09 12:11 PM
Response to Reply #12

30. Bet you can't say it fast three times in a row

Oh -- wait a minute -- you just did.

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galledgoblin

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:23 PM
Response to Original message

13. factory farming needs to be outlawed

not simply because of left wing compassionate, animal-rights reasons or labor rights or small farming protection...

the simple fact is that we're breeding superviruses, making our antibiotics increasingly useless.

if we duck it this time, we'll be lucky and need to take it as a huge warning for the future.

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Junkdrawer

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:28 PM
Response to Reply #13

16. When you concentrate that many hogs in that small a space...

The money you save on labor would be eaten up by the money you need to build big-city sized waste treatment plants.

So, of course, they move the "farms" to countries with lax or no environmental laws.

And, you're right. Even with treatment plants, the contagious-disease-among-weakened-animals problems remain.

It's just a horrible idea all around.

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bluedawg12

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:24 PM
Response to Original message

14. Good find! I hope this leads to better practices with livestock.

I hope you cross post this over at the medical update thread that uppity has going, I will if you give me premission. But it's a good catch and worth passing on.

here's uppityperson's thread, it's more medically oriented, but this is still great for the big picture.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5568345&mesg_id=5568345

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starroute

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:27 PM
Response to Original message

15. Does anybody else remember the Smithfield hurricane story?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/1284074/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/4

Spills aren't the worst thing that can happen to toxic pig waste lying exposed in fields and lagoons. Hurricanes are worse. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd washed 120,000,000 gallons of unsheltered hog waste into the Tar, Neuse, Roanoke, Pamlico, New and Cape Fear rivers. Many of the pig-shit lagoons of eastern North Carolina were several feet underwater. Satellite photographs show a dark brown tide closing over the region's waterways, converging on the Albemarle-Pamlico Sound and feeding itself out to sea in a long, well-defined channel. Very little freshwater marine life remained behind. Tens of thousands of drowned pigs were strewn across the land. Beaches located miles from Smithfield lagoons were slathered in feces. A picture taken at the time shows a shark eating a dead pig three miles off the North Carolina coast.

From a waste-disposal perspective, Hurricane Floyd was the best thing that had ever happened to corporate hog farming in North Carolina. Smithfield currently has tens of thousands of gallons of open-air waste awaiting more Floyds. ...

Joe Luter, like his pig shit, has an innate aversion to being contained in any way. Ever since American regulators and lawmakers started forcing Smithfield to spend more money on waste treatment and attempting to limit the company's expansion, Luter has been looking to do business elsewhere. In recent years, his gaze has fallen on the lucrative and unregulated markets of Poland.

In 1999, Luter bought a state-owned company called Animex, one of Poland's biggest hog processors. Then he began doing business through a Polish subsidiary called Prima Farms, acquiring huge moribund Communist-era hog farms and converting them into concentrated feeding operations. Pork prices in Poland were low, so Smithfield's sweeping expansion didn't make strict economic sense, except that it had the virtue of pushing small hog farmers toward bankruptcy. By 2003, Animex was operating six subsidiary companies and seven processing plants, selling nine brands of meat and taking in $338 million annually.

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G_j

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:29 PM
Response to Reply #15

17. that was horrendous!

I remember it now..

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OneGrassRoot

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:46 PM
Response to Reply #15

18. Yep, it's why as soon as I heard Smithfield had a factory near/in Veracruz...

I perked up.

My hope is that, amongst other things, a bright, bright light can be shown on the ills (literally) of factory farming, both domestically and abroad (no doubt much worse due to lack of regulation; not that it's that great here).

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Are_grits_groceries

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:51 PM
Response to Original message

19. This should make you cringe: Hurricane Floyd and pig shit

Edited on Thu Apr-30-09 05:52 PM by Are_grits_groceries

Pig Lagoons in the United States.
Pig farms with 100,000 animals produce the waste of a city of a quarter-million people, but have no wastewater treatment system. At a single site in Missouri, one pig factory produces fecal waste equivalent to that of a city of 360,000.

One of the main issues is the lagoons typically used by pig farms. Most are as big as football fields. In October of 1999, Hurricane Floyd swept through North Carolina. Spreading with the rain was feces and urine, mostly from giant pig farms. The storm killed more than two million turkeys, chickens, pigs and other farmed animals. Images of bloated pigs and turkey carcasses filled television screens. The storm destroyed more than $1 billion in crops and compromised the drinking water of a portion of the state, with more than 50 lagoons flooding.

In 1998, an Environmental Protection Agency water quality report to Congress cited agriculture as the leading source of pollution in 70% of impaired river miles. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources in North Carolina found 41 cases in which pollution from pig farms reached creeks, lakes, or rivers in 2000. They identified 285 cases in which pig lagoons were too full and in danger of spilling, and 338 cases in which pig farmers had sprayed too much pig waste onto crops as fertilizer. Over a billion fish were killed due to a pig waste spill into the Neuse River in North Carolina in June of 1995.
http://vegan.wikia.com/wiki/Animal_Products_cause_other_pollution_of_the_land_environment

I don't think people realize how nasty the situation with Hurricane Floyd was in NC. The article tells you what and all got swept into the flooded areas. That shit sat there for days in the heat.

I get the willies just thinking about living near that muck. It is a wonder that some mutant disease we have never heard of hasn't popped up.

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HiFructosePronSyrup

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Thu Apr-30-09 05:53 PM
Response to Original message

20. It also confirms ties to humans, birds.

This is not evidence that the virus came from a pig farm.

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Junkdrawer

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Thu Apr-30-09 06:03 PM
Response to Reply #20

21. "a never-before-described triple reassortment" - Just like the new virus...

...

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell ill. A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple reassortment virus�a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus�that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.

...

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HiFructosePronSyrup

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Thu Apr-30-09 06:14 PM
Response to Reply #21

23. Yes, yes, I've read it.

You've posted the same thing four times now. That doesn't change anything.

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struggle4progress

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Thu Apr-30-09 06:13 PM
Response to Original message

22. Remember to thank Wendell Murphy

THE CASE AGAINST INTENSIVE HOG OPERATIONS
February 2004
... In the late 1980s, Wendell Murphy, a North Carolina State Senator, along with his partners Smithfield Slaughterhouses, helped invent a new way to produce pork. Thousands of genetically enhanced hogs would be crammed into pens and tiny cages in giant warehouses, dosed with sub-therapeutic antibiotics, and force-fed growth enhancers from imported feeds. Their toxic waste would be dumped, sprayed, spilled and discharged onto adjacent landscapes and waterways. The mega hog factory was born ... http://www.cefeo.org/thecaseagainst.htm

FACTORY HOG FARMS STIRRING CONTROVERSY 10/97
... The man leading the pork farming revolution is North Carolina�s Wendell Murphy, the nation�s largest hog farmer and owner of 260,000 sows. His adoption of the latest swine technology and perfection of the birth-to-slaughter-to-packaging technique landed the billionaire on the cover of Fortune Magazine�s September profile of the richest 400 Americans. During the ten years he served in North Carolina�s General Assembly, Murphy�s Law came to mean a slew of legislation and regulations favorable to hog industry expansion. Since 1982, annual hog production in the Tar Heel state swelled by more than 400% as the "other white meat" grew into a $2 billion a year business. At the same time, however, North Carolina�s number of hog farmers shrunk from 25,000 to 7,000 ... http://www.wsn.org/factoryfarm/hogart.html

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Junkdrawer

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Thu Apr-30-09 07:27 PM
Response to Reply #22

24. The Meatrix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMOAaciER6o

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KoKo

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Thu Apr-30-09 07:40 PM
Response to Original message

25. Anyone who has eaten pork in the last few years...knows something is wrong.

It's the "cloning" I would think. The meat is tasteless and all looks the same. I know the horrors of what's being done to them...but to bread real pigs out of distinction sounds like something Hitler and Mengele would have done...to create a "Pure Species." But, a "pure species" lakes life, taste and substance.

Something we might want to think about as they Clone us Humans...in the future...not so distant.

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knitter4democracy

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Thu Apr-30-09 10:19 PM
Response to Reply #25

26. The few small family farms left tend to go with different breeds.

We have a butcher locally that only does small family farms in the area, and their bacon is the only kind I eat now. It actually tastes like bacon, not salt.

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eridani

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Fri May-01-09 01:27 PM
Response to Reply #26

34. Anyone who can should support these farmers in every way possible

Given that their meats are more expensive, the way we've adapted is to eat less and appreciate more.

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knitter4democracy

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Fri May-01-09 01:48 PM
Response to Reply #34

35. Our place really isn't all that much more expensive.

I have an alpaca farmer friend who sells gorgeous eggs for a dollar a dozen (and brings them to meetups if I e-mail her ahead of time), and their bacon runs about three dollars a package.

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Pacifist Patriot

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Fri May-01-09 12:52 PM
Response to Reply #25

32. As a vegetarian I'm willing to take your word for it because it sounds like...

exactly what has already been done to the tomato. Have you ever had anything as tasteless as a factory-farmed store-bought tomato these days?

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Junkdrawer

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Fri May-01-09 06:10 AM
Response to Original message

27. Kick

:kick:

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Junkdrawer

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Fri May-01-09 08:15 AM
Response to Reply #27

28. .

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Zuiderelle

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Fri May-01-09 12:16 PM
Response to Original message

31. Makes a DAMN good case for vegetarianism.

Edited on Fri May-01-09 12:16 PM by Zuiderelle

:scared:

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Pacifist Patriot

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Fri May-01-09 12:54 PM
Response to Reply #31

33. I became one in 2002 because of reading one book....

everything I've seen in the news since has only confirmed my decision. Though I will freely admit I cannot entirely give up seafood. I will eat fish and shellfish a couple of times a week. That'll probably be what kills me. ;)

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