A weekend at Smithfield Farms

You weren’t supposed to ride the metro, you weren’t supposed to hug or kiss your friends, you weren’t supposed to visit public spaces, and nobody was telling us exactly why. It was day five of the swine flu outbreak, and we had spent the week hanging out at crowded understaffed hospitals, funerals, poor neighborhoods, and vapid press conferences. It was time to get out of the city, before the fear became more dangerous than the disease.
The way out for me and my girlfriend Benedicte was a weekend trip to El Perote, the center of a massive network of Smithfield owned industrial pig farms and the site of the earliest known case of the swine flu. It was clearly the next chapter in the swine flu story.
It felt great to leave the last infinite sprawl of Mexico city for pine covered mountain passes. But as we dropped into the valley where El Perote is located things felt strange. 125 feedlots dotted a barren plain like so many identical towns in the fading light. Smithfield moved in here on the tails of NAFTA, but things really got out of control over the last few years when they realized in Mexico, they could do whatever they wanted and went on a farm building spree. A million pigs now lived here.
Benedicte knew of a local activist in La Gloria, a small town where the first case of swine flu was recorded. In the orange light of his Virgin Mary shrine Guadalupe  Gaspar, a middle aged farmer who had recently been jailed for organizing a protest against the feedlots told us about the increasing illness in local communities. Thousands had become sick this year, and dozens had died. This was it’s own story, but the international media only cared about Edgar the first diagnosed case of swine flu in the world. After becoming a minor celebrity he was asked off on a “vacation” by the governor.
The governor had also started paving the road in front of Edgar’s house fixed up the towns run down clinic, started a soup kitchen serving 3 free meals a day, and brought in a gourmet coffee truck to keep the campesinos appeased. But this is how they roll here in Mexico, if you can’t beat them, buy them. Gaspar wasn’t eating at the soup kitchen, he was moire interested in making his case to the news media, about how Smithfield farm’s had destroyed his community.
The only problem was, the media wasn’t interested. In a 24 hour news cycle the cause of something pales besides the next dramatic symptom. Do we care why there is so much breast cancer, do we care why our financial system melted down. No, we care about the victims, and there was no more swine flu victims in La Gloria.
The next day we set out on our own to document the Smithfield presence in the area. We starred out at stagnant ponds of pig excrement and listened to the constant rush of food down metal pipes into the packed warehouses, but we didn’t have much time to enjoy our first look at industrial farming before security detained us, and forced us to follow an angry PR hack who was showing a french journalist their “model farm” before flying him via helicopter to their private lab to “prove” the swine flu didn’t come from his farms. “Look” the PR guy said, rushing us around. “No flies, no smell, everything is fine here.”
Since the beginning of the outbreak Smithfield farms and the Mexican government have sought to turn the world’s eyes away from industrial farming as the cause of the swine flu. Even going so far as to say it was impossible that the swine flu originated in factory farms. Since then scientists have traced the disease to a 1990’s influenza from North Carolina factory farms proving industrial farms breed the disease. The only question that remains is, how did it get from pigs to humans. Smithfield farms has blamed the outbreaks on locals raising pigs for the family. Gasper and a lot of scientists think it is a lot more likely that the strain jumped from the factory farms to local communities.
The next day Gerardo, Gaspar’s son showed us the sites our PR guided tour had forgotten to include.
Driving quickly across farming roads to avoid security, we saw numerous manure ponds with no plastic sheeting stopping the toxic waste from entering the ground, we saw piles of drugs used to treat the sick pigs, some was burnt, some lying in gullies, we saw three acre size ponds of pig shit that had been driven up into the nearby hills and dumped in ravines that turned to streams in the wet season, we saw a well that Smithfield had promised a community who agreed to have a feedlot next door. The community was never given access to the well and was forced to use shallow wells polluted by the feedlot. The last thing we saw was concrete death pits. Concrete rooms in the ground where diseased  and dead pigs are dumped and left to rot. Burning them would be too expensive.
Everything was not fine here.
We left soon after, because security was arriving. We had seen enough. Enough to promise each other to never eat industrial grown pork again. And enough to be convinced that the fast and loose way Smithfield farms was operating had created the perfect conditions to create the swine flu, and to pass it to humans.
There is a good chance that the swine flu did not originate at these factory farms, a credible theory places the birth of the disease in Asia. Yet no one can argue that the El Perote industrial farms are a prime suspect. So why is there no international team investigating the farms, why has the Mexican government refused to grant access to an University study on the industrial farms, why does the mainstream media not care about the cause of the disease that has costs the world billions of dollars and helped drive the recession further towards a depression?
And it may be too late to find out the truth. The trail of swine flu antibodies that can prove if the disease had been in a certain human or pig has gone cold and we are left not knowing. Which is right where the Government and Pork lobby seem to want us.
Yet even if there is never any proof found, the lesson was clear to us as we drove back home to Mexico City. The cost of cheap pork is a new breed of mega diseases. Theses diseases will not decimate mankind as the our sensational media likes to imply, but perhaps the Swine Flu offers us all the chance to ask the question, is it worth it, or is their another way.

That was written for Green and Organic Lifestyle Magazine.

Still looking…

The Swine Flu has cost the world billions and governments are bracing for a more virulent comeback in the fall. But still no independent investigation has looked into the factory farming as the cause. Biochemist Carlos Arias is investigating the case for the independent Mexican university UNAM, but according to a well written AP article he has no luck in getting the government provide details about its tests on humans and pigs. Is it a cover up, or just incompetence?

Meanwhile Europe is calling for an investigation into the link between Swine Flu and factory farms.

I hope to have some time this month to look a little deeper into this. Let me know if you have any leads, ideas, or conspiracy theories.

Testing

New York Times has a good article out on the source of the Swine Flu, which is slipping away day by day. They critic the tests done on Smithfield farms by the government, while noting that a team from the National Autonomous University of Mexico is doing its own investigation of industrial hog farming in his state. The study should take months. UNAM is an extremely independent authority, but it remains to be seen if they will have the access, and test samples they need to do any kind of conclusive testing.

In May, the Mexican government said it had tested pigs on the Veracruz farms and found them free of the virus. Smithfield Foods, an owner of the farms, and the National Pork Producers Council, the industry’s lobbying arm, were quick to publicize that announcement.But outside veterinary experts still disagree on whether those tests proved anything. According to Smithfield, Mexican government veterinarians tested snout swabs taken on April 30 and blood samples stored since January. But since the human outbreak in Veracruz is believed to have started in February, many veterinary experts said testing pig snouts for live virus in April proved nothing. Any pig sick in February would have long since recovered and, since hogs are usually slaughtered at 6 months old, many of those alive in early February would be bacon by April.

Now a Pandemic

I just arrived back in Mexico in time to see the Swine Flu reach the level of 6. A Pandemic. But it doesn’t mean so much anymore. But for Mexico it’s too late. The Swine Flu has effectivlely thrust this country and it’s conservative bankers into the reality of the “finanical crisis.”

Press Releases and Lawsuits

I’m outside of Mexico, but still keeping tabs on the situation, and will resume reporting in June.The WSJ recites a Smithfield press release here saying there was never any swineflu on their farms.What a surprise. just as they said.

This on the other hand is interesting: Time.com reports on the first legal action against Smithfield. It may be premature, but it’s the kind of pressure that needs to happen to clear the air.

connection/no connection/connection/no connection

A good article in the Washington Post about Perote and Smithfield farms.

Health officials have found no connection between the pig farms, owned and operated by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, and the flu virus that paralyzed Mexico for much of the past two weeks. But the crisis, which appears to be abating, has inflamed tensions between the world’s largest hog producer and the poor neighboring communities here that have long warned that the farms are a danger to their health.

And they never will find a “connection”, but that does not mean the outbreak did not start in Veracruz. There will be studies done, but without an international team that can invest serious time, the reuslts will be suspect, by most Mexicans, and the world.

On a good note, politicians are backtracking on their support for the farms, and the complaints of local communities are being heard.

Smithfield for it’s part says it is a case of mistaken identity. From a Daily Press article:

The company’s CEO said the team, and a pending series of genetic tests on hogs raised at the massive Granjas Carroll operation, would likely clear Smithfield of any involvement in the spawning or spread of swine flu.

C. Larry Pope said Smithfield hired consultants from the University of Minnesota and North Carolina State University to be “an extra set of eyes.”

“We want an open process here because we feel like this is something we have absolutely no responsibility for, and there is no one in the world who says we do except a couple of locals who have started something,” Pope said, referring to villagers in La Gloria, a town near the Mexican hog farm. “We find a little boy in southern Mexico who gets sick, there happens to be a Smithfield facility close to that, boom, we have the linkage by some people’s standards.”

Smithfield in Mexico

The New York Times has an impressive article on how Smithfield Farms has impacted Eastern Europe.

The connections between the Carrol Farms complexes in Veracruz and the Swine Flu outbreak is still not proven. It remains a powerful possibility, supposedly independent test are due to come out in 12 days according to press releases. However there is still no international group independently investigating the possibility of Smithfield farms being the location the virus came from. The Mexican government also continues to state that none of it’s pigs have the Swine Flu. This is dubious as best, especially considering how little testing has been done.

Science: the Smithfield way

From a Smithfield press release on May 3:

Yesterday we submitted samples from our farm in Veracruz for further testing under the direction of Mexican governmental authorities, including genetic sequence analysis that will determine what, if any, strains of flu are present. The results will enable us to conclude with certainty that the A(H1N1) strain is not present in our hogs. These tests will take approximately twelve days.

Ok, so Smithfield is taking samples (of its choosing), and giving them to a government that for ten years has allowed Smithfield Farms to contaminated dozens of villages and construct 100 feed lots with absolutely no regulation save for a few poor farmers occasionally blocking the highway.  This government will then test for A(H1N1) “in order to enable us to conclude with certainty that the A(H1N1) strain is not present in our hogs“ (Given that that locals have tested positive for the swine flu, might there just be a tiny chance it is present)

Nope, that’s not how we roll here in Mexico.

Smithfield farms may or may not be responsible for this Influenza, which originally came out of hog feedlots in the US in 1998. But given the stakes, to not have an impartial international investigation into their herds would be extreme negligence. Especially considering how this has effected the world.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the rest of my visit to the Smithfield facilities in Veracruz and how the feedlots have effected nearby communities..

check this out…

Croft at the H5N1 blog continues to bang out compelling and pertinent news and information on the outbreak, and has a great selection of resources as well.

Want a H1N1 Flu sequence? Click here.

Wikipedia is doing a good job reporting on the Swine Flu in a reasonably manner.

The Globe and Mail has an article about how the HINI virus is sweeping through pork population scaring the bejesus out of the Canandian Pork industry which has alread seen bans of it’s exports in China. Supposedly a worker gave it to the pigs.  At first I felt bad for the farmers, but after seeing the reality of factory farms, something has got to give. Feed lots will remain resilant refuges of diesease and mutation far into the future, until we can figure out a better way to do things.

The Smoking Pig!

Just back from a dirty, stinky, dusty trip to the center of factory farm hell in Veracruz to read on Wired.com that the Flu most probably came from Factory farms. On an emotional level, if you had seen and smelled what I did you would hardly doubt this, but it remains to be seen if the Government will actually investigate and find proof.

See the article here.

“We haven’t found evidence of infected pigs,” said Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist and member of the World Health Organization’s surveillance network. “But even if we never find that smoking pig, we can surmise that this is probably where it came from.”

The circumstances “are certainly enough to warrant asking questions,” said Lipkin. “The question, then, is how deeply do you want to look to try to find the evidence?”
This is the question.

faces of the flu

7 days of fear.

Click  here to see my photostory on 7 days of Influenza.

Media listen to a government spokesperson announce that Mexico has been hit by an new type of deadly Influneza on Friday, April 24.

cheap pork.

To get to La Gloria from Mexico city, you drive for an hour past concrete houses and dust. Then you pass under a volcano through thick forests of pine. The pine forest leads to forests of Dr. Seuss trees and long dry landscapes. Then you drop into a flat valley.

This flat valley is filled with neat little towns, about 100 of them, except they are not towns, they are feed lots stuffed full of the pigs that make all those tasty Al Pastor tacos in Mexico city.

According to many this is ground zero for the swine flu. For years the communities around here have seen a sharp increase in respiratory illnesses which local activists attribute to the feed lots which moved in 12 years ago.The 106 feed lots in Perote are  owned by Smithfield Farms,  the world´s largest producer of pork, based in Virginia, and Agroindustrias de Mexico a Mexican multinational.
In La Gloria, at least three cases of swine flu have been found, two men died, and one child survived. The child has become a poster boy, but for what, nobody seems to be sure. Because he survived? Because he was the first to get the disease from pigs, from flies? Nobody knows. What the media does know is that La Gloria has the two magic news ingredients. Animals and children.

Few people in La Gloria work in the feed lots, allowing activists to mobilize against the industrial farming since 2006. The towns that work in the feed lots have very little to say against them. The activists, led by a stately vegetable farmer sent letters of protest against the American company that owns the feed lots, and started talking to nearby towns. They got no response from the government. Until a week ago, when the international media arrived. Since then, the local government has started giving everybody in town three free meals today, and the paint is still drying on a new clinic set up next door.
When I arrived a few hundred people eat beans, and ham, and eggs under fluorescent lights. Next to them are stacks of vegetables and beans that should get the town through the next week. But according to the activists, they don’t need food. They need regulation to decrease the amount of contamination in their communities.
In Mexico, local government is known to be astoundingly corrupt. And in a long tradition, they make up for this by taking their constituents out to lunch. This is how they got votes, how they get people to protests, and how they get people to shut up. And it works.

I have to head out to visit some of these farms,  but will update later.

In the meantime you can check out this informative article at Inside Mexico.

Preliminary analysis of the swine flu virus suggests it is a fairly mild strain, scientists say.

BBC reports the virus is mild. This is very good news, but far from the end of the story,

some thoughts going on seven days

Today, Mexico city looked normal. People took the streets after a week of fear. In the morning I saw a couple crossing the streets wearing their masks and holding hands through plastic gloves. But by the afternoon it was hot, and I saw less and less people wearing masks. Mostly because they are hard to find, but also because people are tired of being afraid. It is hard to scare people in DF for very long, and without any convincing evidence about the threat beyond 12 deaths in a city of 24 million, many here remain unconvinced of the threat.

And it is confusing. Why shut down an entire country and go to international code 4 over 12 deaths. My personal view is that the threat is not the virulence of the disease, but it’s ability to spread. Rapidly. Everywhere. I recently visited the naval hospital which is treating patients for the swine flu. They wear full protective equiptment, and give out high quality care. This is in stark contrast to other hospitals which seem like places to come to get the dieases as much as get treated.

But why are people at all dying in Mexico? This is a big mystery. I can’t help but think the pollution in Mexico City would have a serious impact on someone’s suspectiabliy to any kind of Influenza. But it could also be a clear result of a broken health care system that doesn’t not have the capacity to deal with this scale of a problem. According the incredibly informative virology blog, the density of the populatio could play a big role. The virus may spread more quickly, infecting more people, leading to selection of more virulent viral variants.

Google Flu Tracker

Follow the blue dot up. See the site here.

The economy

Poor Mexico, they were so conservative with their finances since the last great inflation. Their economy was stable, and growing. Then the US had to flush itself down the toilet.

Then they had to get hit by pestilence.

But while the stock exchange continues to drops, it is the working poor and lower middle class that are going to pay for this

current crisis. In this piece of audio a taxi drivers tells how the swine flu is effecting his work.

WHO raises pandemic alert level to 5

Dr Margaret Chan of WHO: ‘All of humanity is under threat during a pandemic’

Testing…

The government of Mexico recently stated that they have only been able to confirm 7 deaths in the outbreak, pending tests.

An experienced nurse at the Federal IMSS Clinic #31 stated that the test to confirm whether or not a patient has “swine Flu” take one month to process. She also stated that each day more and more  people are showing up at the Hospital with symptons. She cited a 60% increase in the emergency room. For her, other nurses, and the two docters who work in the emergency this has been overwhelming.

Almost all the people are sent away after being checked out. But in an estimate she stated that 12 suspected cases are found each day.

After spending time at a number of hospitals here in Mexico, I am starting to come to the conclusion that in Mexico. The crisis is about an over streched heath care system that has been fundamentally unable to cope with the potential scale of this problem. I will post more in this later today, as I focus my reporting on the relationship between this outbreak, and poverty and inequality within Mexico.

Airport Slideshow

Click here to see a short audio slideshow from the Mexico City airport.