Our health is being put at risk by our demand for low food prices. In the past decade consumers have chosen low prices over quality in the products and services we purchase -- but animals aren't products that can be endlessly manipulated for lower food costs. As a society it is time to ask ourselves if we are willing to trade our health and the health of our land, air and water in return for cheap milk, eggs and meat.
Animals too sick or diseased to stand are dragged or bulldozed to slaughter and into our food supply. Mad cow disease was born of such recklessness and greed -- a desire by corporations to minimize financial losses by using the remains of diseased animals to feed the animals that enter our food supply. Animals raised on a diet high in antibiotics ensure human consumption of antibiotics, decreasing their effectiveness when we need them to fight infection. The presence of antibiotics in our food and water also encourages the emergence of drug-resistant illnesses. In fact, an increasing number of public health issues are linked to our mistreatment of nonhuman animals -- including the growing human resistance to antibiotics and the many health consequences of global warming.
The authors of the piece in Foreign Affairs make the same point about avian flu; the conditions in which birds are raised for food only encourages disease, and the persistent dosing of the animals with antibiotics and anti-virals used as prophylactics to disease encourages the develpment of drug-resistant forms of those diseases. These diseases do not stay confined to one location, but spread throughout the animal populations of the country, and indeed the world. And avian flu is only one example. And as the author notes:
It is ironic that animal-borne diseases may very well achieve what human activism has failed to do -- guarantee nonhuman animals more humane lives by making animal welfare synonymous with human welfare.
Sadly, most people are largely ignorant of the conditions in which animals raised for food live, and that ignorance seems to be largely willful. It's probably true that Joe Schmoe is not going to give up his cheap rare steak dinner so a few cattle can enjoy a little more space in their pens or have the chance to live in the open as they should regardless of their fate. After all, we Americans are not known for our prudence or discipline at the dinner table. Nonetheless, it is becoming more common to see "free-range" animal products being offered in the grocery story. But it is also becoming clearer that the need to avoid a dangerous threat to our welfare may require that a change in our eating habits be mandatory and not an option.
2 comments:
Good post.
Avian flu is just one of the latest diseases to threaten humans from domesticated livestock. Fast Food Nation covers the hazards of the current state of meat production in the US, which is a model that has been exported to the rest of the world. The conditions that meat is produced in, whether it be beef, poultry, or pork actually increases the presence of disease in meat. That alone should be enough to warrant reform of the meat industry.
I have also heard many (usually conservative) commentators stating that they don't believe avian flu is a threat to humans. On that score, start with Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel as a reference. Not that he dwells on the subject for very long, since he only has one chapter dedicated to it, but it's a very illustrative chapter. Among the list of diseases that jumped from animals to humans are:
Measles
Tuberculosis
Smallpox
Flu
Pertussis
Malaria
We know this for a fact. We know that animal viruses or parasites can and do make the jump to humans. It happens far more often than we notice because not all such cross-species infections become epidemics. That may be for a variety of reasons, but the point remains that viruses of domestic animals can and do cause epidemics in human populations. I'd think that argument by itself would be enough reason for reform of the meat industry.
So there's two very strong reasons to reform the meat industry. There are other reasons, such as moral ones and the fact that the modern meat industry is bad for local agricultural economies, and arguably bad for our health. I think that should be enough. And we can all start by lessening our meat intake (which is just good for your health) and choosing meat products from better companies. And of course petitioning our politicians for reform.
Post a Comment