The NAFTA Flu (farming pathogens)

[Shireling]

This guest appeared on "Democracy Now!" and this article is from his blog.


The NAFTA Flu
April 28, 2009 by rgwallace


Cases of swine flu H1N1 are now reported in Honduras, Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Austria, Thailand, Israel, etc. Can’t keep up at this point.

H1N1 is making its way across the world by hierarchical diffusion. By the world’s transportation network it is bouncing down a hierarchy of cities defined by their size and economic power and their interconnectedness to Mexico City, the international city closest to the initial outbreak. It’s no coincidence that New York and San Diego were among the first cities hit. The virus is also engaged in contagious diffusion, spreading out within each new country hit.

For the most part only a few cases have been reported in countries other than Mexico. But as influenza, unlike SARS, can transmit before symptoms show, there may be no way to stop H1N1 now. New York now reports hundreds infected.

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Early reports have identified the sources of the new H1N1’s genome as strains that have infected humans, birds and pig populations from both North America and Europe. In an important way, then, ’swine flu’ is a misnomer. This influenza is a ’swine-bird-human’ reassortant. The extraordinarily complex origins of the new influenza—across so many host types and geographic regions—is telling us something about influenza’s present ability to cross host species and bridge great spatial distances between livestock populations.

First, we know that agribusinesses are moving their companies into the Global South to take advantage of cheap labor and cheap land (something to which we will return). But companies are also engaging in sophisticated corporate strategy. Agribusinesses are spreading their entire production line across the world. For example, the Thailand-based CP Group, now the world’s fourth largest poultry producer, operates poultry facilities in Turkey, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and the US. It has feed operations across India, China, Indonesia and Vietnam. Trade in live animals is also expanding in geographic extent.

These new configurations act as a cushion against the market’s putative ability to correct corporate inefficiencies.

For instance, the CP Group operates joint-venture poultry facilities across China, producing 600 million of China’s 2.2 billion chickens annually sold. When an outbreak of bird flu occurred in a farm operated by the CP group here in the province of Heilongjiang, Japan banned poultry from China. CP factories in Thailand were able to take up the slack and increase exports to Japan. IN SHORT, THE CP GROUP PROFITED FROM AN OUTBREAK OF ITS OWN MAKING. IT SUFFERED NO ILL EFFECTS FROM ITS OWN MISTAKES.

more at:

http://farmingpathogens.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/the-nafta-flu/#more-131

[ensho]

1. kick - we a reaping what the meat Barons have sown

down with Barons