STOP FACTORY FARMS = STOP BIRD FLU

Sounds like sensible fair minded comment to me.

Ross, your unattributed screaming quote above from the article that you don't link was written by a journalist about something he calls H5Nl, not H5N1. The journalist also tells us that there have been no human-to-human infections.

I'm sorry to say that with this you've worn me out on trying to keep this thread useful by identifying deliberate disinformation.

Thanks for the useful contribution.

Shameless defense of factory farming

.......................................................

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,2059592,00.html

'Only intensive farming' will feed Britain

· Organic agriculture 'will never meet demand'
· Professor warns of soaring prices and shortages

David Adam, environment correspondent
Wednesday April 18, 2007
The Guardian

Britain must continue to intensify its farming practices to meet soaring demand for cheap food and prevent shortages, a leading agricultural expert said yesterday. Demand for biofuels, booming economies of developing countries and climate change will put demand on food supplies that can only be met by intensive techniques, said Professor Bill McKelvey, head of the Scottish Agricultural College. Prices could soar and future generations in the UK may find they can no longer take plentiful food for granted.

At a London briefing, Prof McKelvey defended intensive techniques and said alternatives such as organic farming would not cope with predicted growth in population. "There is a need to continue to intensify farming. Organic farming has a place but it will never feed the growing population of the world," he said.
Media criticism of modern farming techniques after the bird flu outbreak at the Bernard Matthews turkey farm in Suffolk had been unfair, he said, adding that intensive farming protects the environment because it reduces the amount of land used for agriculture. Europe would also have to overcome its "illogical" opposition to genetically modified crops to help boost yields, he said.

"In the UK, we are becoming less self-sufficient in food. I think it's possible in the next 25 to 50 years that there will be food shortages in the UK." The proportion of average British family income spent on food might double from 10% to 20%, he said. The UK currently provides 60% of its own food, and imports were increasing, said Prof McKelvey, who advises industry and the government.

With world population forecast to grow from 6bn to 8.5bn in 50 years, he warned that countries such as New Zealand that export food to Britain were likely to switch attention to China and India. Food demand there is increasing sharply and meat consumption in China has doubled in the last decade. Prof McKelvey said the solution was farmers producing more food on the same amount of land. Wheat production increased four-fold in the last 50 years and in the next 50 years would probably have to rise by the same level again, despite a shortage of suitable land. "There are only two ways to do that. We either take land from rain forests or we intensify existing farms. We will protect the wild environment by making better use of farms."

Plant breeding - conventional and using genetic modification - was the best way to produce more food from the same amount of land. Although very little is grown commercially in Europe, millions of hectares of GM crops have been grown across the world in recent years.

"Europe is going to have to face up to using GM crops," he said. Climate change is also expected to put pressure on food supplies, despite an initial boost in productivity for some crops.

Prof McKelvey said great swathes of agricultural land would be lost to desert, with the effects already felt in areas such as southern Spain. Bio-fuels, a suggested solution to global warming, could bring added problems for food production.

Patrick Holden of the Soil Association, which promotes organic farming, said "business as usual" intensive farming would not be possible in future because of the fossil fuel costs and the greenhouse gas emissions associated with nitrogen fertilisers. Organic farming could equal and sometimes even exceed the yields of chemical intensive farming systems. "The challenge that global agriculture confronts today is to research and develop these systems, because we are on the threshold of a post-fossil fuel era."
    
    

BF prevention measures somehow don't apply to commercial farms in residential neighborhoods of Jakarta

"The administration must also be consistent in applying its ban. Currently, there are still several poultry farms located in residential areas."

    http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailcity.asp?fileid=20070418.C07&irec=6

http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-35/1176994045280460.xml&coll=6

Flu epidemic is 'inevitable,' expert says
Thursday, April 19, 2007
By Pat Shellenbarger
The Grand Rapids Press
The question is not whether an influenza pandemic will strike, an expert on the disease said. It is when.

"Certainly another pandemic is inevitable," said Dr. Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture for the Humane Society of the United States, noting worldwide epidemics occur on average every 27 1/2 years. The last was in 1968.

"We don't know how soon it will be," he said.

Most likely, it will be the bird flu, said Greger, who will speak about that possibility during a free lecture Friday evening at Calvin College and Saturday morning at Herrick District Library in Holland.

But do not blame the birds. Bird flu and some other illnesses are the result of how poultry and other animals are raised in large factory farms, he said.

"Chickens used to peck around the barnyard," said Greger, author of the book "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching." "Now we cram them in these sheds beak-to-beak in their own excrement."

He compared a potential bird flu pandemic to the 1918 Spanish flu, believed to be the most deadly pandemic in history, infecting half the world's population, 25 percent of Americans and killing 20 million to 100 million people worldwide.

The bird flu virus, known as H5N1, bears some similarity to the 1918 flu, Greger said. Like its predecessor, bird flu appears to be most deadly among young adults in the prime of life. Medical researchers believe the 1918 flu turned the body's immune system against itself, virtually destroying victims' lungs. Thus, those with the strongest immune systems tended to be the most vulnerable.

Bird flu so far has killed about half the humans it infected, mostly in Southeast Asia among those who live and work closely with poultry. If the virus mutates, Grand Rapids could be spared the worst. Of 45 cities with more than 100,000 residents studied by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Grand Rapids had one of the lowest mortality rates during the 1918 outbreak, Greger said. In Grand Rapids, the disease killed 1.9 people per 1,000, compared with 10.3 deaths per thousand in Pittsburgh.

"We don't even know if H5N1 biologically has the capacity to mutate to a human form," Greger said. "We may get lucky."

But he doubts it.

Send e-mail to the author: pshellenbarger@grpress.com
    
    

Here is a trip back to may 2004 to see exactly how HPAI H5N2 in Texas was eradicated . "We had early notification," said Coats [then Max Coats was deputy director of group administering emergency response; today Coats is the new US rep assisting Indonesia on BF]. "We had a prompt diagnosis. We had a plan. We had trained people lined up to take the plan and put it into action."

http://www.window.state.tx.us/comptrol/fnotes/fn0407/fighting.html

Take a look, and read about how a large team of experts with unlimited funding did everything right to prevent spread between commercial farms of an outbreak at one farm in Gonzalas, Texas, by quarantining every aspect of commercial activity, including the team itself, motivated by the need to protect the industry - this virus was not dangerous to people.

God bless and good luck to Dr. Coats in his new role in Indonesia, where there are outbreaks among poultry happening in remote locations, unreliable notification, delays in testing, inedequate staff, and so far no plan has worked.

From the Dr.H.Niman Website    20 April 2007

Qinghai H5N1 Migration in Europe the Middle East and Africa
Dr. H. Niman Commentary
April 20, 2007

The broad dispersal of these isolates throughout these countries during a relatively short period, coupled with weak biosecurity standards in place in most rural areas, implicates human-related movement of live poultry and poultry commodities as the source of introduction of influenza (H5N1) into some of these countries.

The virus' presence in wild birds leaves open the alternative possibility that migratory birds may have been the primary source, with secondary spread possibly caused by human-related activities.


According to the researchers, the broad dispersal of the disease also suggests that human movement, and not the migration of wild birds, is primarily responsible for the rapid spread of H5N1.

"The migratory pathways of wild birds don't correspond with the movement of the genomes that we sequenced," said Salzberg. "Humans carry chickens between many of the countries in our study, often transporting them across great distances. That and the weak biosecurity standards in most rural areas point to human-related movement of live poultry as the source of the introduction of H5N1 in some countries."

The above comments in the paper, "Genome Analysis Linking Recent European and African Influenza (H5N1) Viruses", represent an unfortunate representation of the expanded geographical reach of the Qinghai (Clade 2.2) strain of H5N1 and associated evolution.  The paper provides sequence analysis of samples collected in early 2006, which confirm that all of the H5N1 isolates in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa were the Qinghai strain, and there are regional differences.  However, that conclusion, along with the fact that the vast majority of the spread is due to migratory birds, has been quite clear since 2005.  The above paper focuses comments on trade as a source of spread to "some of these countries", but provides no evidence for such a statement, and follows with the false statement in media reports, claiming that "migratory pathways of wild birds don't correspond with movement of the genomes that we sequenced".

The correspondence of the H5N1 spread with migratory bird pathways has been known since the summer of 2005 (see dynamic map), and such pathways predicted the movement of the Qinghai strain of H5N1 from southern Siberia / northern Mongolia into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.  The sequences in the paper provide further confirmation that the primary mover of the Qinghai strain of H5N1 is migratory birds.

The strain was first reported at the Qinghai Lake nature reserve in May, 2005.  Initially, all positives were from dead bar-headed geese.  The subsequent OIE report described infections in five species of waterfowl and the number of dead birds continued to rise through the month of May.  Most of the dead birds however, were bar headed geese that can fly 1000 miles in a 24 hour period, providing a mechanism for transporting H5N1 over long distances.  The Qinghai Lake nature reserve was populated by over 100 species of waterfowl and is at the intersection of multiple flyways.  Many of the species at Qinghai Lake in the spring, spend the summer in southern Siberia and northern Mongolia.

Thus, when H5N1 was reported at another nature reserve, Chany Lake in Novosibirsk, and sequence analysis showed that the H5N1 in Russia was the Qinghai strain, there was little doubt that long range migratory birds were spreading H5N1 over long distances.  The reports of Qinghai H5N1 in and around Chany Lake were quickly followed by reports of H5N1 in adjacent Kazakhstan, as well as Erhel Lake in Mongolia.  None of these countries had previously reported highly pathogenic H5N1, and all three reported Qinghai outbreaks in the summer of 2005.

The reports of widespread infections in the summer of 2005 in Mongolia and Russia led to prediction that H5N1 would spread to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in the fall of 2005 and winter of 2006.  This prediction was confirmed by the detection of H5N1 in the Volga Delta in Russia, and the Danube Delta in Romania.  These areas had not previously reported H5N1, and again the H5N1 was the Qinghai strain, which was being detected in dead waterfowl (primarily mute swans).  These confirmations in the fall of 2005 provided additional evidence for the movement of Qinghai H5N1 from one nature reserve to another, faithfully following known migratory bird flyways.

H5N1 was also reported in western Turkey in the fall of 2005, but most countries denied H5N1 infections in wild birds or poultry.  The failure to detect H5N1 in wild birds was due in part to the low sensitivity of the testing, as well as the low levels of H5N1 in live birds.  Although Russia had detected H5N1 in hunter killed birds in regions that were heavily infected with H5N1, none of the European countries had detected H5N1 in wild birds.  Egypt subsequently identified H5N1 in a healthy teal in the Nile Delta in a sample that was collected in December, 2005, but initial testing was negative.

Thus, false negatives in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa led to the false conclusion that H5N1 migration into the region was limited.  However, the deaths of several patients in eastern Turkey due to Qinghai H5N1 infections clearly demonstrated that H5N1 was in the region, and subsequent testing demonstrated that H5N1 was widespread in wild birds and poultry in Turkey.  Although neighboring countries continued to deny H5N1 presence, culling of poultry began in January, 2006.  In February 2006, H5N1 detection exploded, and was reported for the first time in over 40 countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.  All of these infections were due to the Qinghai strain.  A presentation in Italy in the spring of 2006 indicated that over 700 H5N1 positives were detected in Europe, and phylogenetic analysis of approximately 80 of the isolates showed that they were all the Qinghai strain.

There was little evidence to support significant movement by trade.  Although poor biosecurity can lead to local spread, the evidence against long distance spread of Qinghai H5N1 by trade is also overwhelming.  The "Asian" strain of H5N1 was first reported in China in 1996 and subsequent isolates from China and Hong Kong between 1996 and 2003 indicates H5N1 infections were a continuous problem.  In 2003/2004 H5N1 exploded out of China and was reported in countries to the east and south east of China, but no country to the west reported H5N1.

However, after detection of the Qinghai strain in migratory birds in May, 2005, H5N1 rapidly spread into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and the spread followed migratory bird pathways.  Recent reports of H5N1 in feces collected from live markets in southern China between mid-2005 and mid-2006 only found one Qinghai strain.  The vast majority of the 4141 reported isolates in China were the Fujian strain (clade 2.3).  Moreover, the H5N1 detected in quarantine in England in late 2005 was also the Fujian strain, but the Fujian strain has never been reported in wild birds or domestic poultry in Europe, the Middle East, or Africa, further discounting the role of trade or exotic birds in the spread of Qinghai H5N1 into regions west of China.

In addition, the sequences of H5N1 in the 2006/2007 season from birds or humans in Egypt supports multiple introductions of H5N1 and the continued evolution of H5N1 by recombination.  The recent simultaneous acquisition of a polymorphism previously detected in a large subset of wild bird isolates in Germany provides compelling evidence for widespread infections by a common source.  The polymorphism, NA G743A, was detected in six isolates in Egypt, representing three distinct subclades, and the polymorphism was also found in Moscow, in an additional Qinghai subclade. 

This simultaneous appearance on multiple Qinghai genetic backgrounds in diverse locations is most easily explained by recombination between migratory birds and local H5N1 populations.  The German isolates had a number of regional markers for Germany, but lacked markers from Egypt or Russia (which were closely related to 2006 isolates from Azerbaijan).  The 2007 isolates were collected over a short time frame in the winter of 2007, and the new acquisitions were on very distinct genetic backgrounds.

The evolution of H5N1 is driven by migratory birds and recombination.  This mechanism produces multiple subclades in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.  The above comments, which fail to understand this most basic mechanism of H5N1 evolution, are cause for concern.
 

Recent expansion of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1: a critical review in the journal Ibis

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1474-919X.2007.00699.x

Abstract
Wild birds, particularly waterfowl, are a key element of the viral ecology of avian influenza. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus, subtype H5N1, was first detected in poultry in November 1996 in southeast China, where it originated. The virus subsequently dispersed throughout most of Asia, and also to Africa and Europe. Despite compelling evidence that the virus has been dispersed widely via human activities that include farming, and marketing of poultry, migratory birds have been widely considered to be the primary source of its global dispersal. Here we present a critical examination of the arguments both for and against the role of migratory birds in the global dispersal of HPAI H5N1. We conclude that, whilst wild birds undoubtedly contribute to the local spread of the virus in the wild, human commercial activities, particularly those associated with poultry, are the major factors that have determined its global dispersal.
    
    
    

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=15620053&itool=iconabstr&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum

 

< = value=15620053 name=uid>1: Med Mal Infect. 2004 Nov;34(11):499-505

 

 

• Chastel C.

Laboratoire de virologie, faculte de medecine, 29200 Brest, France. chastelc@aol.com

Tropical Africa is not the only area where deadly viruses have recently emerged. In South-East Asia severe epidemics of dengue hemorrhagic fever started in 1954 and flu pandemics have originated from China such as the Asian flu (H2N2) in 1957, the Hong-Kong flu (H3N2) in 1968, and the Russian flu (H1N1) in 1977. However, it is especially during the last ten years that very dangerous viruses for mankind have repeatedly developed in Asia, with the occurrence of Alkhurma hemorrhagic fever in Saudi Arabia (1995), avian flu (H5N1) in Hong-Kong (1997), Nipah virus encephalitis in Malaysia (1998,) and, above all, the SARS pandemic fever from Southern China (2002). The evolution of these viral diseases was probably not directly affected by climate change. In fact, their emergential success may be better explained by the development of large industry poultry flocks increasing the risks of epizootics, dietary habits, economic and demographic constraints, and negligence in the surveillance and reporting of the first cases.

PMID: 15620053 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=15624878

 

[Avian influenza: eradication from commercial poultry is still not in sight]

[Article in Dutch]

• Landman WJ,
• Schrier CC.

Gezondheidsdienst voor Dieren, Arnsbergstraat 7, 7418 EZ Deventer.

Avian influenza viruses are highly infectious micro-organisms that primarily affect birds. Nevertheless, they have also been isolated from a number of mammals, including humans. Avian influenza virus can cause large economic losses to the poultry industry because of its high mortality. Although there are pathogenic variants with a low virulence and which generally cause only mild, if any, clinical symptoms, the subtypes H5 and H7 can mutate from a low to a highly virulent (pathogenic) virus and should be taken into consideration in eradication strategies.

 

The primary source of infection for commercial poultry is direct and indirect contact with wild birds, with waterfowl forming a natural reservoir of the virus.

 

Live-poultry markets, exotic birds, and ostriches also play a significant role in the epidemiology of avian influenza.

 

The secondary transmission (i.e., between poultry farms) of avian influenza virus is attributed primarily to fomites and people. Airborne transmission is also important, and the virus can be spread by aerosol in humans.

 

Diagnostic tests detect viral proteins and genes. Virus-specific antibodies can be traced by serological tests, with virus isolation and identification being complementary procedures.

The number of outbreaks of avian influenza seems to be increasing - over the last 5 years outbreaks have been reported in Italy, Hong Kong, Chile, the Netherlands, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, China, Pakistan, United States of America, Canada, South Africa, and Malaysia.

Moreover, a growing number of human cases of avian influenza, in some cases fatal, have paralleled the outbreaks in commercial poultry.

 

 

(remember china... "find the sick humans") 

 

There is great concern about the possibility that a new virus subtype with pandemic potential could emerge from these outbreaks.

 

 From the perspective of human health, it is essential to eradicate the virus from poultry;

 

however, the large number of small-holdings with poultry, the lack of control experience and resources, and the international scale of transmission and infection make rapid control and long-term prevention of recurrence extremely difficult. In the Western world, the renewed interest in free-range housing carries a threat for future outbreaks. The growing ethical objections to the largescale culling of birds require a different approach to the eradication of avian influenza.

PMID: 15624878 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Yes that's another good reason for large scale tightly controlled and
well managed operations to replace these other dreadful operations.

The artcicle copied in the post above is about factory farmers in North Caroline derailing democracy to stop regulations that protect people (what do we expect from people who condone animal abuse??). The letter below describes these same folks hurting people in Iowa.
..........................

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070410/OPINION04/704100375/-1/SPORTS01

Legislature should act on hog-farm bill

April 10, 2007
      2 Comments


This year, the Iowa House Environmental Protection Committee has worked long and hard on HF 873. The bill addresses many of the problems with our current regulatory system that puts the interests of factory farms above the concerns of everyday people living in Iowa.

HF 873, the factory farm accountability bill, should have gone to the full House to be voted on as drafted by the Environmental Protection Committee. But Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy sent it to the House Agriculture Committee so the Farm Bureau could have more input.

Right now, the Farm Bureau is in the driver's seat of agribusiness in Iowa, not the everyday voter. This bill, as written, would strengthen the permitting process and make it tougher to build factory farms, would lower the construction permit threshold to 1,250 hogs versus the current 2,500, increase separation distances and give all counties the right to challenge construction permits.

Individuals wishing to get some control over factory farming sites in Iowa need to contact House Speaker Murphy, Rep. Dolores Mertz and Rep. Mike Reasoner and tell them to pass HF 873 in its present form with no changes.

And here is a story about how Walmart labels factory farm products "organic" because they can charge more for it...

...........................

http://www.raidersnewsnetwork.com/full.php?news=4299

Organic Milk That Isn't Either
Added: Apr 4th, 2007 8:03 AM

Interview: Organic Consumers Association's Ronnie Cummins tells the truth about organic milk that isn't

by: Mike Adams

With consumer demand for organic products continuing to grow, more large corporations are entering the organic market. To maximize profits, some of these companies don't follow organic standards but still label products as organic. For example, Horizon Organic and Aurora Organic, sold by Wal-Mart and other retailers, continue to produce "organic" milk under factory-farm conditions that few reasonable people would consider truly organic.

According to the Organic Consumers Association, half of Horizon's "organic" milk today comes from what can only be considered "factory" dairy feedlots -- and much of Aurora's organic milk does as well. Rather than buy organic calves that have been raised from birth on organic farms, these companies seemed to have discovered it's cheaper to buy conventional calves that have been raised on conventional farms, install them in factory feedlots, then milk them and call it organic.

The situation has become so alarming that the Organic Consumers Association ultimately called for a boycott, and many knowledgeable consumers are now avoiding the Horizon brand entirely.

The organic milk controversy extends to organic soy milk as well. Horizon Organic's parent company, Dean Foods, also bought out Silk, the leading organic soy milk brand in the United States. Dean Foods has pushed for lower organic standards in the United States and to allow industrial-style production to be called "organic."

Meanwhile, major grocery chains import cheap, so-called "organic" soybeans from China, where the workers are treated much like slaves and organic standards are dubious. They are also imported from Brazil where the Amazon rainforest is being bulldozed in order to create more acreage for growing soybeans.

To gain more insight on the details of this emerging battle over organic standards, NewsTarget editor Mike Adams sat down with Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association for some straight talk on organic milk. What follows is the full interview.

Mike: I am here today talking with Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. That is at www.OrganicConsumers.org. What's the overview of the situation on organic milk, Ronnie?

Ronnie: Well, the good news is, there is such a huge demand for organic products across the United States and North America that there is a serious shortage of supply. One of the types of products that are in serious short supply is organic milk. This is already more than a $1-billion-a-year industry in the United States, out of the $15 billion in organic food sales last year.

The problem is that our government - specifically the U. S. Department of Agriculture - takes about $90 billion of our tax money every year, and they give subsidies to all of these factory farms to go organic, but they give no subsidies to help family-scale dairies make the transition to organic. We literally do not have enough family farmers with the wherewithal to achieve organic certification and make the product.

At the same time, we have these giant retail giants like Wal-Mart who have noticed that the public wants organic food and they are willing to pay a premium price for it, so they and the other retail chain stores have moved with a vengeance to dominate the organic market. Wal-Mart is now the number-one seller of organic milk in the country. The problem is that the milk they are selling - Horizon Organic - is not really organic. It is coming from the factory-style dairy farms where the animals are kept in intensive confinement and have been imported from conventional farms as calves. They simply label it organic, and the USDA lets them get away with it.

Mike: Let us get into more detail on that, because I want people to understand how they do an end-run around this organic label. First, do you agree that there is some degree of success in the fact that consumer demand for organic products is now so strong? Is that not a success by itself?

Ronnie: It is a tremendous success. It is attributed to the fact that a lot of us spent the last 30 years building up an alternative food and farming system in the United States. This alternative system has proved to be much better than industrial agriculture, and so now the latest polls show 75 percent of Americans say they are shopping for healthier food. If you look at the statistics, about 12 cents of every grocery store dollar are going for foods that are labeled as either natural or organic.

Mike: Well, that is a substantial sum. That is growing at, what, about 20 percent a year or something?

Ronnie: Growing at 20 percent a year, whereas conventional food sales tend to grow about 2 percent a year. This 20 percent-a-year growth has been steady ever since 1991. It appears that it will continue through the end of this decade, so by then most food sold in grocery stores will have a label that says 'natural' or 'organic'.

The question is: If we let these gigantic corporations like Horizon and Wal-Mart take over the industry, will it really be organic?

How the USDA enables big business to corrupt organic standards for profit
Mike: Let's talk about the definition of organic, then. What should organic really mean in terms of, not only the treatment of the cows, but also what chemicals are not in the milk, for example? What is the real definition?

Ronnie: There are organic farmers all over the world - in about 100 countries - who are certified organic nowadays. Traditionally, organic has always meant that you raise crops without chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers and that you raise animals without drugging them up with hormones or antibiotics. You cannot take sewage sludge and put it on farmlands. You cannot feed animals things like blood, slaughterhouse waste, manure and municipal garbage, and you cannot use untested and hazardous technologies like genetic engineering or fruit irradiation. The animals have to be raised on pasture - which is their natural behavior - where every day of the growing season, weather permitting, they are out on pasture eating grass and foraging as they have evolved to do.

What has happened recently is that Wal-Mart was buying their organic milk from genuine organic dairy farmers that pastured their animals, and then they turned around to that company - Organic Valley - and they said, "Hey, we want a lower price," just as Wal-Mart always does. Organic Valley said no, so Wal-Mart then turned to Dean Foods, the largest dairy conglomerate in the world - which had bought out Horizon Organic - and said, "Would you sell to us?" To which Horizon said, "We will sell you the cheapest organic milk you have ever seen."

Horizon conveniently took advantage of the fact that Federal Organic Standards say the cows must have access to pasture, and they said, "Oh well, I guess theoretical access to pasture is good enough. We are going to chain up our cows and milk them three times a day, and they will never get out pasturing unless there is a news organization coming to the farm that day. We will still call it organic." They have been doing this for four years, and there have been complaints from the Organic Consumers Association and organic farmers all over the country.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has completely ignored these complaints for four years. However, now this controversy has reached such a state, with the mass media covering it and retail stores across the country starting to drop Horizon and Aurora Organic, that the USDA is finally making noises that they will clear up this situation and promulgate federal regulations that actually require the animals to be pastured.

They will make sure that the animals were not imported from some conventional dairy farm where they were weaned on blood, fed antibiotics, slaughterhouse waste and chicken manure and then called "organic." The animals must be raised from birth as organic, and they must be pastured every day during t he growing season - a minimum of 120 days a year. This is what organic has always meant in terms of raising cows, and it is what it should mean now.

Mike: Now, these are pretty serious accusations of Horizon Milk or Dean Foods' behavior. How are you able to support this? Do you have an insider taking pictures, or how did you become aware of this behavior on their part?

Ronnie: It was called to our attention by a watchdog organization called The Cornucopia Institute, which actually visited some of these factory-style dairy farms that Horizon and Aurora call organic. They witnessed first-hand things like a farm where there are 4,000 animals, but only a few hundred acres of pasture. You cannot possibly pasture animals on that little pasture, especially when they are in semi-arid parts of Idaho, Colorado and West Texas.

Then beyond that, workers on these farms started coming forth as whistleblowers. There was a story in the Chicago Tribune about one of these whistleblowers who pointed out that these cows are not put out to pasture. The only time they are put out to pasture is when there is a media organization or an important person coming out.

Yes, it is first-hand information. It is a look at the terrain that these factory-style dairy feedlots are set on. Look at the size of their pasture, and then the fact that there was a national survey of organic dairy farms that came out March 22 - which the unethical dairies did not respond to or they got really low ranks - whereas, the ethical producers were happy to be transparent about their practices.

The good news is, almost all the organic farmers in the country are actually practicing real organic standards. The bad news is that the market leader, Horizon Organic, and their junior partner, Aurora Organic, are flagrantly violating organic standards to the point where we, the Organic Consumers Association, had to call for a boycott. We have never called for a boycott against an organic product before. This was going too far, so starting in early April, we called on consumers across the country to start boycotting the products of Horizon Organic and Aurora Organic, and to boycott the brand names that the leading retailers are selling from Horizon and Aurora at Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, Giant, Publix and Wild Oats.

Mike: Well, this seems like a clear case in which big business is now seeing dollar signs whenever the word "organic" appears, so they are doing the minimum necessary or even just blatantly violating the rules in order to put that word on their products, regardless of the spirit of the law or the original intent of organics. Is this just corporate greed?

Ronnie: This is, and the sad thing is, how easy it would be to help 5,000 or 10,000 conventional family farmers make the transition in their dairies to organic. It would not be that hard. It would not cost that much money, and this way we could still have organic standards that were real, animals treated humanely and not damage the environment.

Of course, we have not even mentioned that one of the reasons you want organic animals to be outdoors and pastured is because the quality of the meat and milk is much higher if the animals are raised naturally on grass. The other organic requirements mean that the end product is going to be healthier as well. They are not going to have antibiotic residues or genetically engineered hormones. They are not going to be spreading mad cow disease and so on. We, right now in the United States, have an excess of milk being produced by family-scale dairy farmers who are not yet organic. It would be very simple to help those who want to make the transition do so if we were to force the government to give us a fair share of our subsidies to help these farmers do that.

Lax standards of corporate manufacturers and retailers affect both organic milk and soymilk products
Mike: Now, you mentioned that pasture-fed cows are healthier cows. This gets back to something you mentioned earlier that needs to be emphasized, because most people simply do not believe this is happening. Conventional cows, in fact, are being fed chicken litter and other animals.

Ronnie: Yes, they take it from birth. Cows were traditionally weaned on their mother's milk, but industrial agriculture figured out that it's pretty expensive to wean the calves on milk, so they decided to wean them on blood. That is common practice nowadays on a conventional dairy farm. Then, you feed them primarily grains that are genetically engineered, but mixed in with those grains are things that make the animals grow faster and put on weight, like slaughterhouse waste - basically ground up pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and everything else are fed to them.

They found out all these factory poultry farms around the country were producing billions of pounds of manure that pollute the environment. What can we do with all this manure? Presto, they feed it back to cows. They sweep up the manure, the feathers and the dropped bits of cattle that are fed to chickens in their feed. They sweep that all up, turn around and feed it back to cows.

Most people in the United States are shocked when they hear that 80 percent of the drugs and antibiotics made in this country are not fed to humans to cure them of some illness, but fed to animals in their feed every day to make them grow faster. Scientists do not totally understand why, but they do know that if you cram thousands of animals together in unsanitary or unhygienic - not to mention inhumane - conditions, they all get sick and die.

The only way to keep them alive is to constantly feed them antibiotics. Of course, what that means is you turn around and drink a glass of dairy milk from a conventional farm, and you are getting residues of antibiotics in every drink. They also figured out, "We could use our genetically engineered hormone to shoot up these cows with this hormone produced by Monsanto, even though it is banned in just about every industrialized country in the world except for the United States." If you shoot up dairy cows with this hormone, you can force them to give more milk, and you can keep milking them even past their lactation period. You can actually milk a cow not for a year, but for up to a thousand days. Of course, the cow will drop dead after that, but they do not care.

For all these reasons, there is a huge movement on the part of American consumers and especially concerned parents and concerned grandparents - if they drink milk and if their kids and grandparents drink - to switch to organic.

Mike: Is it fair to say, Ronnie, that the organic-labeled Horizon Milk on the shelves in Wal-Mart right now comes, at least in part, from cows that were at one point in their lives fed blood, manure, chicken litter and some other things you mentioned? Is that accurate?

Ronnie: Yes, half of Horizon Organic's milk today comes from these factory dairy feedlots. One hundred percent of Aurora Organic's milk comes from these factory dairy feedlots. It is cheaper to not buy organic calves that have been raised from birth on an organic farm, but to buy conventional calves that have been raised as cheaply as possible on a conventional farm. The routine practice today on a conventional farm is feeding the animals blood plasma as a milk replacer. You feed them genetically engineered grains, slaughterhouse waste and chicken manure. That is industry standard. Why? You can make more money doing it that way.

Mike: Okay, so for those reading this, take a closer look at that bowl of cereal next time. If you are pouring cow's milk in there, you might want to buy genuine organic and not the cheap stuff.

Ronnie: Here is another point that you might think about: for those people who do not drink dairy milk, but who buy organic soy milk, the leading organic soy milk brand in the United States is Silk. Many consumers have no idea that Silk - just like Horizon Organic Milk - was bought out by this giant conglomerate, Dean Foods.

Silk used to buy their organic soybeans from U.S. and Canadian organic soybean farmers, and they paid them a decent price - $16 to $21 a bushel - for these organic soybeans. Well, now that Dean Foods has bought out Silk, they are starting to import cheap, so-called organic soybeans from China, where the workers are treated like slaves and organic standards are dubious. Or, they are importing soybeans from Brazil where there is a huge uproar over the fact that people are whacking down the Amazon - the lungs of the planet - in order to plant export crops, specifically soybeans, to export.

Even if we think this does not affect us, because we do not eat meat or we do not eat dairy, we have to see the effect of these big corporations like Dean Foods coming into organic. Wal-Mart wants to sell you stuff that is cheaper than their competitors, and the only way they can do that is to outsource it from overseas - places like China and Brazil - where worker rights and environmental standards are routinely violated, or else lower standards in the United States and allow industrial-style production to call itself organic.

Mike: Now, this is obviously a very important story for consumers to follow. How can they continue to get updates from you on this story?

Ronnie: Every day on our news site, www.OrganicConsumers.org you will find updates. We have a whole section of our website called "Safeguard Organic Standards," where you can take action … send a message to what we are calling the "Shameless Seven." These are the large corporations trying to defraud consumers and put ethical organic farmers out of business by labeling factory farm production - and slave labor production, in the case of China - as organic.

Mike: I want to thank you, Ronnie, for taking the time to give us all of this shocking information today.

Ronnie: Thank you.


Related Resources

• Organic Consumers Association – (www.organicconsumers.org)

• The Cornucopia Institute – (www.cornucopia.org)

• USDA's National Organic Program (http://www.ams.usda.gov/NOP)

Here is a photo illustrating factory farming in India. As the caption points out, 5000 chickens dead from unknown cause, but note the lack of biosecurity.
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May 8: A poultry farm worker in Matigara, India administers medicine to a chicken at the farm where 5,000 birds were found dead Saturday; bird flu has not been ruled out as a cause of death.

    http://www.foxnews.com/photoessay/0,4644,1714,00.html
    

http://www.preda.org/work/child%20rescue/AI/airep08.html
Child and adult detainees confined together in a crowded prison cell in the Visayas. The crowding of birds and animals, here is the overcrowding of people in a prison with no running water, a hole in the ground for a toilet, and sleeping on the floor.

When the H5N1 goes H2H, a pandemic is inevitable. JMHO

Annie, H2H may bring inevitable pandemic, as you surmise, and efficient H2H is, in fact, the definition. My great concern, and the reason I persist with this thread (gathering info in one place), is that the world is ignoring the threat of efficient B2H, which almost certainly will bring human pandemic, and is evolving right now in factory farms.

Efficient B2H is unlikely to evolve through human contact with birds, but rather through contact between birds. This seems counterintuitive to many, and the focus has been on limiting contact between species, but when efficient B2H emerges within the confines of these meat factories, it will be difficult to impossible to prevent the development of efficient H2H. The misplaced emphasis on H2H distracts the world from this threat, and leads those working to stop the emergence of pandemic to wrongly suppose that there can be such a thing as a safe factory farm through biosecurity.

Crowding people and birds together in prisons, such as you illustrate in your post above, can result in more opportunities for H5N1 to jump from birds to humans, but it is the effort to prevent contact between birds and humans that pressures the virus to evolve more efficient transmission, and this is what is occurring in factory farms.
    

Poultry farmers in India blame factory farms for bird flu and destruction of their livlihoods, claim that big players are unecessary to feed people
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http://www.dailyindia.com/show/141597.php/Punjab-poultry-farmers-see-big-market-players-as-threat-to-their-industry

Punjab poultry farmers see big market players as threat to their industry

By Ravinder Singh Robin

Amritsar, May 16: Poultry farmers of Punjab are up in arms against the State Government over the support being extended to big market players.

The Punjab poultry industry, which was ranked first in India in 1984, has dropped to the seventh due to what farmers' term as the anti-poultry attitude of the government.

Agitated poultry farmers claim that they experiencing huge losses due to natural calamities and with the presence of mega companies.

The local poultry association is afraid that the recently introduced 'Contract Poultry Farming' by the mega companies would damage poultry industry in Punjab irrevocably.

Punjab is the first state in the country to introduce contract farming at the government level. The main objective of this programme is to prepare farmers to cultivate quality and marketable produce based on the demand and supply chain.

Farmers blame big players like Suguna Farms, Japfa Feeds, Venky's and Godrej for the so-called Bird Flu declared in the country.

In a letter to Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, the Amritsar Poultry Industry Association has cried out for help, claiming that it feeds more than three lakh people directly or indirectly.

G S Bedi, a poultry farmer and president of the Amritsar Poultry Industry Association said: "These mega companies neither generating new employment nor putting any investment in Punjab. However, these companies are doing complicated agreements with the farmers and mortgaging the land of poultry farmers".

Almost all the clauses in the agreement are in favor of the companies, and not of the poultry farmers, Bedi adds.

Yogesh Sharma, General Secretary of the association said: "If we allow these companies in the state, then money earned at the cost of our investment, shall go out of Punjab and there will be no benefit to Punjab state".

"The Punjab poultry industry is producing enough chicken in the state. Around eight to nine crores of broilers are being produced in the state. Out of total production, near about 60 per cent production is being sold to Jammu and Kashmir," Jaspal Singh Dillon, another poultry farmer, said.

At present, there are about 3000 poultry farmers, 20 hatcheries, around 30 feed factories, around 300 feed dealers, 60 medicine shops, 1000 meat shops and 200 egg dealers.

Only one or two companies shall earn and all other working in poultry will loose their livelihood and dependent families shall starve.

The Punjab poultry industry of more than 4000 crores was doing a business of nearly 400 crores annually.