UPDATED – 2 MAY

As the risk of a Swine Flu pandemic increases, we should think about how it came about, and what we could do to prevent similar crises in the future. The financial meltdown lead politicians to consider systemic changes – will the swine flu outbreak do the same for the food production industry?

Some suspect that this outbreak originated in the ironically-titled town La Gloria, in Mexico, where Smithfields food churns out a million pigs a year. Smithfields deny the link, of course, and their homely website would lead you to believe that factory farming could not be further from the reality. Contrast the warm fuzzies on their website with journalistic reports – like this one from The Times, or this one from The Independent – about swarms of flies, rotting pig carcasses, and underground pools of manure at their factory farms.

Hugely intensive factory farming results in unhealthy animals and unhealthy environments. Animals don’t get the exercise, clean air or sunlight they need to develop properly, so farm owners compensate with a cocktail of medications. Getting rid of waste becomes more difficult on the larger scale, and, with so many animals so close together, disease spreads easily. Check out the Meatrix if you’re interested in more on this.

So what is to be done? Profound systemic changes will be difficult, if not impossible, with such fluid global movement of people and products. It would involve every government agreeing to, and enforcing, very rigorous health and safety changes.
But on a personal level, we can do something. We can stop buying factory farmed meat and dairy, and go for free-range and organic versions instead. Yes, it is a lot more expensive. But we should look at the real cost of consuming cheap meat, and ask ourselves if it is something we really need to eat on a daily basis?
How about organic meat once a week, rather than regular helpings of ultra-processed, antibiotic-laden smush? That’s my mid-year resolution.

UPDATE:
Felicity Lawrence, author of Eat Your Heart Out: Why the Food Business is Bad for the Planet and Your Health goes into these issues in more depth in this excellent article in the Guardian.

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