Killing sick animals for food or mistreating livestock can have devastating consequences ranging from the worldwide spread of avian flu to outbreaks of bird and swine flu that killed hundreds of thousands of people, a Maryland expert says.
Michael Greger, director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States in Bethesda, published two journal articles linking the emergence of food-borne diseases to factory farming.
Inhumane farming conditions that confine large numbers of animals in small spaces without exercise are partially to blame, Greger wrote in Critical Reviews in Microbiology in January.
“These are costs the industry passes on to the consumer,” Greger said of the epidemics that can result from poor agricultural practices. “We?re paying for their short-sightedness.”
While no human cases of bird flu have been reported in the United States, World Health Organization scientists say the disease could develop the ability to spread easily from person to person.
Greger warns that with the age of jet travel, it would only take one infected passenger to spread a mutated bird flu virus around the world.
Food and livestock transportation is another weak link in the food chain, Greger wrote in a January article in the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism.
“Many pigs are born in South Carolina, fattened in the Midwest and slaughtered on the coast. It?s easier to bring the pigs to the feed than bring the feed to the pigs,” Greger said.
While the USDA requires animals be rested, fed and watered after 28 hours of travel, the agency has interpreted the law to only apply to trains, although most animals move by trucks.
“In the modern age of refrigeration, you should be able to transport fresh and frozen product all over the world,” Greger said.
