Beyond Covid 19. Are we risking yet another pandemic if we continue to embrace "assembly-line" livestock production into the future?

by Larry Powell

No one would argue that Covid 19 demands our undivided attention. Surely, defeating this "beast" has to be "Priority One." But, once it ends, and it will, here’s another key question that needs answering. Are we flirting with more such tragedies down the road if we do not soon end our love affair with an industrial, factory-style model of meat production? 

Six years ago, Dr. Margaret Chan (above), then the Director-General of the World Health Organization, delivered this positively prophetic message to an Asian investment conference. 

“The industrialization of food production is an especially worrisome trend. Confined animal feeding operations are not farms any more. They are protein factories with multiple hazards for health and the environment."

                                      Photo credit - Mercy for Animals, Manitoba

"These hazards come from the crowding of large numbers of animals in very small spaces, the stressful conditions that promote disease, the large quantities of dangerous waste, the need for frequent human contact with the animals.” 

The "farms" Dr. Chan was describing have been operating in North America  and Europe for decades and, more recently, in Asia, too. In much of the world, they're called "CAFOs," or Confined Animal Feeding Operations. In Canada, they're known as "ILOs," or Intensive Livestock Operations. 

China now produces more pork in this way than the rest of the world, combined!

Most scientists view wet food markets - where both wild and tame animals are sold, alive or dead - as hotspots for the emergence of new viruses that could spark the next influenza pandemic. (It is widely believed that the current Covid-19 pandemic originated at such a market in Wuhan, China.) Health authorities also say, as many as three out of every four new diseases emerging in the world today, result from close contact between humans and animals, either wild or domesticated.

The pandemic we are now struggling with, surely focuses (or should focus) renewed attention on this traditional livestock model, now being rapidly expanded right here in my home province, Manitoba. 

First, Covid 19 is a coronavirus, a family of infectious diseases. So, too is PEDv (or Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus). PEDv claimed the lives of countless, defenseless piglets in the big hog barns of Manitoba in recent years. (I say countless because the industry won’t say how many and the Government - which sees its role as an enabler of the industry's business success - not as a regulator - claims it doesn’t know.) 

The epidemic cost provincial taxpayers at least $800 thousand dollars to combat. But this figure did not come freely. I had to launch an "access to information" request in order to pry it from the secretive fist of this Conservative government.

It’s believed Covid 19 originated with bats in China. So, it is thought, did PEDv. The difference is that Covid 19 “spilled over” into the human population, while PEDv has not. 

At least, not yet!

According to the Centers for Disease Control (US), “Sometimes coronaviruses that infect animals can evolve and make people sick and become a new human coronavirus. Recent examples of this are Covid 19, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome).”

No one knows for sure whether PEDv will “morph” into something that will attack people. And that is precisely why we need credible, comprehensive and, above-all, independent research to at least identify and quantify the risk, once and for all. 

And I don’t mean the kind that’s now taking place at the University of Manitoba, which appears to be anything but. There, researchers, with hefty financial input from the pork industry in no less than seven provinces, are studying “pig foot printing.” 

So, just what does that mean? Far from looking into the industry’s profound and often negative impacts on the environment, or on human and animal health and welfare, the project shamelessly flaunts itself as a way to “advance the profitability of the Canadian swine sector” and “promote competitiveness.”

Does this sound like an initiative that will get to the bottom of any future health risks which it may pose to you and me?

Attempts by the citizen’s group, HogWatch Manitoba (HWM), to get more details about the research (i.e. whether it will find out how much industry pollution is leaking into waterways, for example), have fallen on deaf ears. So too, has the group's offer to provide input into the research. 

That a place of higher learning like the UofM should sign off on such a questionable project is surely nothing less than a grotesque conflict-of-interest.

For Manitoba, sadly, this looks like just another bit of "the old normal."

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Of Pandemics and Climate Calamity. An Opinion Letter.

by Larry Powell

I guess you could call this a“what if” letter.

Wildfire smoke from hundreds of kilometres away, clouds
this Manitoba landscape. A PinP photo. 

What if we humans would listen as intently to our specialists in the earth and climate sciences as we now seem to be doing to those in infectious disease? Except for a fringe few (like the wing-nut "Frontier Centre," which likens Covid-19 to a hoax), many of us have accepted that this is serious and lives will be saved if we follow public health directives during this virus's heartless rampage. 

Compare this to the attention given to the decades of warnings of climate collapse and eco-system breakdown from experts in the atmospheric sciences. The differences could not be more stark. 

While our Medical Health Officers and other specialists in the field of infectious diseases are, rightly, being hailed as heroes, climatologists and others in similar fields, have been ignored, at best, or threatened with death, at worst. 

Meanwhile, sea levels have not stopped rising, global heating has not taken a pause and neither have violent, destructive and costly weather events like wildfires and flash floods, or mass species extinctions, just because of the deadly pandemic. 

While greenhouse gas levels did drop significantly due to Covid-imposed lockdowns of travel and industrial plants, much more will be needed to make a lasting difference. Besides, those levels are already on the way back up with such restrictions being lifted in many places.

While a lot of hard-nosed Albertans will never admit it, Fort Mac, hit by a disastrous flood recently (on top of the tragic wildfires that ravaged the Town some four years ago) is, yet again, another tragic example of the cost of climate denial.

In an article I read recently, writer John Gibbons, puts it in a different, perhaps more effective way. 

“Imagine, for a moment  that our government and others around the world had been given detailed information and warnings about the coronavirus years, even decades before it finally erupted. Imagine also that experts had shown the path to minimizing or even avoiding this global disaster, but our political and business leaders, uneasy about the costs of taking action and possible disruption to commerce, chose to ignore the expert warnings as alarmist and carried on regardless.” 

The scenario Gibbons describes is pretty much the way governments have treated long-standing warnings of climate calamity - with contempt, indifference, neglect  or downright hostility. 

So, what if we begin to bring the same, respectful approach to alleviating our climate crisis as, largely, we've already with Covid-19? 

The sky, I do believe, would be the limit!

-30-

Of pandemics and politicians. (Opinion)

by Larry Powell

Politicians need to be judged, not by their words, but their actions. Ontario Premier, Doug Ford has been generally well-received for his press conferences during the pandemic. Sounding good. Saying the right things. But it was under his watch, after all, that inspections of Ontario's personal care homes were slashed to save money. And we all know how tragic and deadly the situation has become within such homes in Ontario and elsewhere. Sadly, Ford's actions are consistent with a neo-liberal agenda that has dominated the world, notably since the Reagan/Thatcher era. Cut, slash. Get governments "out of the way," Contract out. Lay off. Throw your jurisdictions "open for business" while shrinking public services like education and health. Let the market rule! (Music to the ears of the likes of Mike Harris, former Tory premier of ON. He seems to have done alright assuming the helm of one of the for-profit, private home-care companies in that province.)

Then, there's Alberta. Premier Kenney appears, in some ways, to grasp the gravity of the crisis and what's needed to counter it. Yet his government has shamelessly and heartlessly directed (no doubt at the behest of its rich, powerful and American-owned owner, Cargill) the re-opening of a big meat plant which has seen the single largest outbreak of the Covid-19 virus in North America! This is shameful and outrageous. It flies in the face of warnings from the Union there, that a re-opening would only lead to a resurgence of the pandemic, putting its members under even greater risk. Many of those members are vulnerable foreign workers, forced by economic necessity to live in crowded housing and work in dangerous, cramped condition in the plant.

It was also under Kenney's watch that an "inspection" of the plant was carried out via Skype! This, too is in keeping with neo-liberal philosophy. Its leaders view most any regulation as nothing more than "red tape" to be done away with, no matter the consequences.

 (Just look at Manitoba, where a Tory regime - with positively Trumpian zeal - has done away with "pesky" rules which once kept at least a partial reign on a now-runaway, high-maintenance, costly-to-the-public-purse, cruel and polluting, "factory-style" pork industry.)

As long as we keep electing leaders who care more about political expediency and cronyism than science, nothing will change.

What could our post-pandemic world look like? It depends on you and me!

by Larry Powell

Like everyone else, I’m worried. But not just about the Covid-19 pandemic. 

It’s what the future holds once it ends that scares me, too. Man’s assault on our planet simply cannot pick up where it left off when the virus hit. It’s true that our economy cannot remain at this level of lockdown forever. But, if we just come “roaring back, full tilt” when it’s over, we’ve learned nothing. And civilization as we know it will resume its relentless slide, once again. 

So what have we learned?

Lives can be saved just by slowing the frantic pace of human activity. Pollutants spewing from industrial plants, ground vehicles, jet planes and ocean vessels have dipped dramatically due to the slowdown forced by Covid. And they’re not just greenhouse gases which are dangerously heating up the Earth, spawning violent storms, rising sea levels and devastating floods (think Fort Mac.) that have gone down, significantly. They’re also the kind that get into your lungs and kill perhaps a million or more of us each year -  with asthma, stroke, heart disease, lung cancer and acute respiratory diseases (source - WHO).  

Some are even saying that this “great cessation” may be saving more lives than Covid is claiming! 

Meanwhile, many wild creatures, historically under full frontal assault from humans who’ve either been hunting them or destroying their homes, are beginning to tentatively reclaim some spaces once overrun by us.

What else should we be learning? Well, it's been shown now - we can actually hold virtual meetings "in place," online, instead of boarding climate-destroying jets to the other side of the Earth for a meeting or convention. And, if we have to (and we are), we can actually survive without the Olympic Games, the World Cup, the NHL, NBA or the CFL for a bit! Perhaps when the smoke clears, we can actually "get by" with an Olympics every four years, instead of two and a World Cup once in four. 

Maybe minor hockey associations can even find ways of reducing the number of kids we load on buses, sending them on lonely and dangerous trips to tournaments far away. Maybe more games, closer to home might be in order? 

And maybe we don’t need to travel to a “sunspot” once or twice a year to bask on the beach or attend another “destination wedding.” Maybe a “staycation” or backyard event might prove just as enjoyable.

And only the dimmest among us will not know by now, how effective and deadly a role passenger jets and cruise ships play in spreading pandemics like this. The cruise line industry is probably one that could "go under" forever with no loss to our quality of life. These morbidly obese "tin cans" have been floating petrie dishes for way too long.

And here’s the most ironic lesson of all - one we should have learned long ago. You can’t force people to work in crowded conditions like meat-packing plants -  the very conditions livestock themselves are raised in - without consequences. Thousands of such workers in North America are getting sick - and scores are dying, of Covid. If this isn’t proof-positive that long-standing warnings about intensive livestock operations (factory barns) are valid, then what is? The WHO and the CDC (and many other health authorities) have been trying to tell us that, cramming large numbers of animals into big buildings where they can scarcely turn around, is an invitation to disease. 

Why should people be any different?

One needn’t look further than Manitoba to explain what I mean. It's been a terribly cruel and wasteful chapter in this province's history. *Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED), a highly infectious virus, invaded many crowded, intensive, confined, factory hog barns a few years ago, claiming the lives of many helpless piglets. I say “many” because the industry refuses to give a number and the provincial government says, it doesn’t know! This is in keeping with its “hands-off” attitude toward an industry that runs largely free of any rule that might protect you and me from serious harm. To Premier Pallister and his team, such rules amount to nothing more than “pesky red tape” that need, with Trump-like enthusiasm, to be done away with quickly.

A plethora of animal diseases kill millions of animals, worldwide, yearly - some directly - others through deliberate culling of healthy animals to prevent spreading. Sometimes, they spread to humans, too, with lethal results.

So we can’t be too smug about far away places that sell tame, wild and "farmed" animals, alive or dead - high-risk places for the spreading of disease. Surely we have our own form of “wet-markets” here in the west - where we do much the same with hogs, cattle, chickens and even wild “farmed” fish - cram them together for maximum profit. 

Finally, is it now as far-fetched to envision a future in which we all consume less (or no) meat, given the long environmental shadow that livestock casts over our world? Maybe now is the time for just such a momentous decision!

If we look upon our present, pandemic troubles only as something to put behind us, so we can take up business at the same, reckless pace as before, we are missing the point. This is, or can be, a golden opportunity to build a cleaner, greener, safer and kinder home - one we can share in tolerance and respect with both our fellow humans, our natural surroundings and all other living things. 

* Like Covid-19, PED, too, is a coronavirus. 

Please also read:

Beyond Covid 19 - Defeating the virus is just the beginning!