Appreciating Precaution

As the current swine flu nears pandemic status, we still have an awful lot to learn about the origins and causes of the disease. Some reports have stated that the swine flu most likely originated in the Mexican state of Veracruz, while other reports refute that.

The media are naturally looking for an explanation for the crisis, and many fingers have been pointed at a huge feedlot in Veracruz that produces one million hogs annually. The corporation and the hog industry at large have rightfully protested that circumstantial evidence should not implicate them.

Regrettably, small farmers and other hog industry workers throughout the world will take a financial hit for an event that does not involve them. However, it should be noted that the call for the public’s precaution in their food purchasing behavior is not without some irony. During the past 30 years, the hog industry, as well as many other forms of agriculture, has morphed in ways that would be unrecognizable to our grandparents. Think of confinement operations that have thousands of animals under a single barn, the frequent use of antibiotics for both therapeutic use and growth enhancement, and lagoons of manure that far exceed the ability of the farm to appropriately utilize the nutrients in the manure. When unusual new infectious diseases emerge, is it really surprising that the public would wonder if these hog confinement operations have anything to do with it?

The hog industry has dramatically changed its production practices without the consent—and often with the vocal opposition—of the general public. Here in the Midwest, concerned citizens have been fighting the expansion of hog feedlots for decades. In Mexico, neighbors of the Veracruz feedlot have been complaining since mid-March about water contamination and respiratory issues.

The food industry understandably laments the fickleness of public opinion. But by using production practices that go way beyond the general acceptance of the public, the hog industry has decided to build itself a proverbial glass house. Once in a while people are going to throw stones.

Comments

[Phillip Huggan]

Is the pork industrially globalized? That is, if you slaughter pigs in New Zealand, adjusting for transportation costs would this have the same effect on pork supplies in Thailand as if you slaughtered pigs in Brazil?

Can the pork industry regenerate easily? If you slaughter a given % of piggies, assuming farm supports can farm capacity be restored easily within say, two years by making imports from unslaughtered capacity? I guess I'm asking the adult pig population doubling time assuming unlimited $$.