As I listened to all the commentary concerning the Mexican Swine Flu, one thing continued to jump out at me. In the reports describing hundreds of thousands of people in Mexico City wearing face masks, the huge Smithfield Farms swine confinement facility where the flu was likely incubated, or Joe Biden expressing concern about his family traveling in a commercial airplane, there was a hidden but common thread. The new stain of flu was, of course, painted as an imminent danger. But no one seemed to identify the overcrowding of people or pigs as the overarching problem behind the headlines.
Maybe it is because I do not live in a crowed place that I am hyper-sensitive to animals being packed together, cheek to jowl – as it were. Maybe having a constant and plentiful supply of pure air and lot’s of purifying sunshine makes me feel that it is more important than most of our urbane or agricultural planners seem to think it is. But somewhere in the sketchy biology educations that we all received in high school is the awareness that diseases thrive when their hosts are crammed together. Disease hosts are, after all, only units of suitable habitat for evolving organisms that are striving madly to multiply. Think of a human or a pig as an acre of land with native grass and plentiful prairie flowers- a unit of suitable habit for, say a Dakota Skipper butterfly. There may be a few Dakota Skippers in that unit of habit but if the surrounding land is barren corn fields there will be no Skippers. If the next unit of suitable habit is ten miles away, the Skippers in the original acre will certainly perish. They can’t cross those miles of corn field.
Most people find the situation of the Dakota Skipper commonsensical. The solution to increasing their numbers is to simply arrange for the units of suitable habit to be very close together. For some reason our civilization seems hell-bent on doing the same thing. It would be grand if the outcome of our silly desire to pack more people in cities and airplanes, and more pigs in confinement building – was more Dakota Skippers. But the outcome is more diseases and more difficult to manage diseases.
So why do we do it? Modern Mexico City is not a pleasant place. Hog confinement barns are dismal to the extreme. Joe Biden can tell you why traveling in commercial airplanes is crazy. What do we gain from all this cramming of individuals together? It must be a desire to increase commerce.
It is truly amazing what we will justify to make the dollars circulate faster. Some of what we do is good and important, but some of it is not. Click here to check out what Jill has uncovered in her research.
Comments 6
Thank you for writing about this situation of overcrowding and lack of thought (other than an ugly way to make money).
I live in Ontario, Canada and it seems to take too much effort for many people to think independently and wisely regarding their own state of health and how it is fully connected to the health of all living things.
These people behave like big and wrinkly children who seem to depend on ‘others’ to tell them what to do, what is cool, looking to maintain membership in the masses. Poor buggars.
It creates good business for the pharmaceutical companies promising to relieve their depression and anxiety.
Thank you, again. 🙂
Linda Grant
Dan as always you are on target with your musings. The standard of society is motivated by greed. More pigs more money without a thought or care as to the end result! I live in rural ohio and every day I am thankful for the fresh air and sunshine that I enjoy without fear of swine flu and other such maladies.
You have such a way of explaining things (your butterfly example) that clearly illustrates what you are trying to say. I wish everyone could / would read your writings!
I found a number of dead birds in my yard last week and got cold chills thinking about the hog lagoons surrounding my farm from 3 different mega hog confinements that have recently gone bankrupt. Bankruptcy is a regular occurrence every few years with these operations. It’s always easy to know when the new owners take over because the night mare sounds from herded screaming pigs and banging noise from unloading and loading thousands of pigs in to trucks starts up again. And the sound of gun shots killing sick pigs interrupt the solitude when relaxing or working in the yard. The smell of pigs never goes away for my neighbors living down wind whether there are pigs in the buildings or not because they walk away and leave the lagoons full of waste for some one else to deal with.
The buildings are 20 to 30 years old now and I pray this time no one will think they are worth fixing up. The lagoons and over applying waste to the land have done their damage. I don’t let my grand children drink water from the kitchen sink with out it being filtered, or use it to quench the thirst of my baby animals because the nitrite level is so high it will make them sick or as in the past kill like it did my all my baby animals one spring before I realized we had a problem. There is always hope that conditions will improve if the confinements are shut down.
I was sad this week to see the red fox I was fortunate to see bouncing threw the tall grass on our farm many mornings this spring dead on the side of the busy gravel road by my farm. It makes me sad that long gone around here are the coyotes we heard in the past barking at dusk and threw out the night to be replaced by screaming mistreated pigs banging on cages. We encourage the wrong way to grow our food motivated by greed when we purchase from those who screw with nature, and think animals are units for profit, not Gods creatures to be treated with respected for what they give us and the sacrifice they make for us. And those who don’t care about the damage they do to the environment around them. Dan I am so grateful that you share your experience with others and live by example for others to follow.
Why do we do this to ourselves and to the earth? How do we stop living so dangerously? I fear for rural America and rural, natural places around the world. During WWII the US population was about 147 million. In 1984 the US gov’t projected a population of 310 million by 2050. Today our population is nearly 308 million! Now the gov’t projects the US population in 2050 at 420 million! More people, more factory farms, more pollution …! One day soon we need to get our society off of the ever increasing “Gross National Product” way of thinking and living. Otherwise the “Silent Spring” will be our haunting. I wish I could say I am optimistic about the future. Still each of us in our own way needs to do what we can. Buffalo on the prairie is a comforting thought.James
I believe this newsletter is the best yet. I enjoyed all the footnotes, in-depth articles, and organization of the web site. Keep up the fantastic work.
That the pigs, or the industrial workers inside a confinement facility, can die when the ventilation fails is god’s way of telling is to not raise pigs like that. Yet, in Iowa, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in charge, no one is willing to do anything to rein in these factories, masquerading as farms. thank you dan for your efforts and for your voice on these matters