Repeat After Me

[ Now living in exile in Langley, the two birds will soon be legally allowed back in their coop in Chauvel’s Kitsilano backyard after Vancouver city council voted unanimously Thursday to change city bylaws to legalize the keeping of urban hens.] Van Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vancouver+latest+municipality+allow+urban+chickens/1358260/story.html

Ok.

Biosecure pork production is a good thing.

Where's my treat? :)

"Toronto's Chinatown, denizens habitually spit on the sidewalk (sidewalks littered with "broken crates of boc choy")"

I spent a lot of the '80's in and around China town in Toronto. There were a lot of good, clean conscientious people working in the food industry there. But I saw some very terrible things on a regular basis. Things you couldn't really imagine people doing with food and then serving it to people.

It also doesn't help when twits believe it's against their human rights for McDonald's to require them to wash their hands when preparing food.

"It also doesn't help when twits believe it's against their human rights for McDonald's to require them to wash their hands when preparing food."

It is much worse when the BC HRC backs this person up and says no hand washing is A-OK.

I think the reason that we are seeing a big explosion in diseases/illnesses in cattle and pigs and poultry over the last few decades is due to the now standard mass manufacturing methods of producing food.

The reasons for cleanliness when entering a mass production pig facility is not only to protect humans but it is to protect pigs. If a human gives something to a pig in those tight circumstances then every pig will get it and it could mean a huge financial loss.

Both my parents grew up on farms - these farms are hundreds of years old (not big modern operations) - and every animal intermingled but very rarely did anything get sick. They knew when an animal was acting funny and they would isolate it or even kill it if they thought it necessary but they never ever heard of the kind of flu's we are hearing about today. If they had to slaughter a cow you knew you were eating real grass fed beef and not some forced to eat grain to fatten cows up quickly beef.

This is an area when the hysterical greenpeace guys are actually correct (by accident I'm sure.)

Mass farming, just like over-populated areas, makes it easier for disease to spread. Add to that the blatant abuse of antibiotics and you are not farming swine, you are farming the next drug-resistant super-bug.

Of course, the greentards never actually come up with a viable solution (and don't eat meat ain't a viable solution!) so I really don't know how to feed large swaths of humanity in a cost effective basis while minimizing the spread of disease.

Some of the giant pig factories in the US are horrifying though and I'm sure if we're going to suffer the next Spanish Flu, it'll be pigs who act as the Petri dishes.

cconn: please provide evidence of an "explosion".And define "forced".

Livestock intermingling in the way your family did things is not natural any more than high density barns. And disease contrary to your anecdotal memories is far far more prevalent in the former. Grass fed cattle can get things like scours and - rarely - anthrax.

Human farm animal proximety is important, as in general seperation.

In poorer societies you get compromises where human's try to "economize" and use space for multiple things, like their apartment or urban space as a place for animal husbandry.

Nothing wrong with growing vegetables in the city, a good thing as long as you dont use human excrement as fertilizer (it happens more than you know). But chickens etc really shouldnt be allowed within the limits of a human habitation, nor should pigs.

Hmm, maybe that Muslim/Jewish restriction on pork had some folk wisdom in it?

Stephen

You shouldn't use pig crap for fertilizer either. The pigs have been given gargantuan levels of drugs and still carry disease such as E-coli which are then passed to humans by their sprouts, spinach and strawberries (just 3 of the recent outbreaks from food which shouldn't carry disease.)

ccon and Warwick, I have to disagree gentlemen. We have two things going on. One is vastly increased air travel and international food trade, the other is (oddly) vastly -decreased- government inspection.

Result, unsanitary conditions are allowed to exist and indeed persist, as we saw recently with Maple Leaf Foods and their listeria problem. They decided to stop spending money cleaning, because nobody came around and -made- them clean up.

This is understandable. Cleaning is expensive and a pain in the arse for the people who have to do it, so it needs a third party to come in and kick the ant hill every week. That job has been assumed by the various levels of government, and THEY AREN'T DOING IT. Various reasons for that, most of them boil down to corruption and/or PC stupidity.

Therefore we have disease outbreaks. In Canada, thankfully, farmers and food production managers are smart enough to know that short term savings mean long term pain, so they do a pretty good job, which to date has been good enough.

Mexico, as anyone will tell you who's been there, is a dump. Well run farms are the exception, not the rule. Mostly you've got small family farms run last-century style, and very large factory farms run robber baron style. That means whatever gets the lettuce out the door is fine. Sanitation is considered optional. You know, its a good thing but we can't afford it this week.

China is just so much worse, 16th century rice/duck/pig subsistence agriculture with human waste for fertilizer. Sanitation? Bwahaha! As if! Its a witches brew of microbes and viruses, which is why new strains of flu come from there every year. This swine flu may have mutated first in Mexico, or it may turn out to have come from China. Either way, no surprise.

But you will notice one thing, lads. CANADA is not a -source- for these contagions. We don't brew them up here. The reason is modern farming techniques.

The real cause of the problem is airplanes.

Phantom,

The mass farms incubate and developed whole new strains of disease. Small-scale, family farms are not likely the source of many new diseases (although any cut of meat improperly handled can easily spread existing disease.)

Mass transit (be it air, boat or subway) as well as crowded streets makes transmission easier once an outbreak has started but it has to originate somewhere.

It used to be that clipper ships would loose plague-carrying rats at port to spread disease. Now one plane full of people can get off at one hub, transfer to 20 different planes and go to every corner of the world in 24 hours.

It's all part of the same story. But mass farming is the origin of many (although obviously not all) of the problems. You don't spread a disease which hasn't been incubated at some source.

It's the new strains and drug resistant versions of old bugs which are most likely to come from industrial farms. Modern farming techniques are partially to blame. In order to pack the maximum number of animals in the minimum amount of space, you have to knock to the animals up with super-doses of super-strength antibiotics. When that fails, it will do so spectacularly.

cconn: "I think the reason that we are seeing a big explosion in diseases/illnesses in cattle and pigs and poultry over the last few decades is due to the now standard mass manufacturing methods of producing food."

Why is it then, that the epicenter for the culture of these flu outbreaks is usually in places like rural China, where the opposite of the mass manufacturing methods of producing food is practiced?

Modern air-travel is the major factor in a modern pandemic.
The 1918-19 Spanish Flu epidemic was spread by the masses of Allied troops returning from Europe.
"factory farms" as pathogen sources is a lefty urban myth. The small traditional 3rd world farm is the real source---a very potent human-animal interface...and questionable hygene.
Modern NA swine barns are our blessing. These biosecure facilities are designed to isolate the herd from external/internal infection...eliminating the need for anti-biotics. Biosecurity is cheaper and more effective than anti-biotics.(simple economics) The lefty urban myth about antibiotics, has as much autheticity as "An Inconvenient Truth".

sasquatch

I hope you're right about the antibiotics thing.

As for the third world, I would suppose the problem lies less in the fact they have animals as with the fact they let them sleep in the house...

Warwick,

Wasn't implying pig poo either. The point I think we both agree on is that some older methods incorporated the ideas of seperation of location, sanitary disposal etc.

You would be amazed that farms buy "sludge" from water filtration pants. These include human waste, and they get spread on fields. this starts to close the food chain, never a good thing. Just like there is concern over some feeds for cows and pigs that use ground up cow and pig, effectively making them cannibals.

Perhaps it is safe, perhaps not. Just offends the high level priciple that you shouldnt close up food chains.

We often have to relearn some older wisdom, that may not be expressed appropriately. Things like, don't marry relatives, don't engage in cannabalism, wash your hands, keep your house clean, animals are for outdoors.

So poorer societies have cultural practices that, while apparently rational from a short term economic perspective, make no sense in the long run.

Sars came from Civet cats. These things were kept near chicken and other birds in crowded markets. good mixing bowl.

Seperation, cleanliness etc. are generic goods, despite cultural practices. Perhaps someone needs to start saying that their "culture" is clean well run animal husbandry and it is offensive to them, they are offended and "hurt" when it isnt done. (sarc off)

Oh no! It's Man-bird-pig! Someone call Al Gore!

Kathy you just don't get it. Pigs are not on the list of "Historically discriminated identifiable minorities(and majorities: women). See the difference?

Now if they were profiling black, gay or female pigs specifically, you'd have a point.

Get with the program, or get programmed!

"But you will notice one thing, lads. CANADA is not a -source- for these contagions. We don't brew them up here. The reason is modern farming techniques."

I'll check with Janet Napolitano and the DNS before I jump to conclusions.

Folks, lets not get carried away with condeming corporate large scale production. Remember a town called Walkerton Ont? Well the problem started with an adjacent amateur farmer, with a couple of cows did not control the animal wastes properly, and the effluent entered the towns badly caulked well, so constructed almost 20 years before and not repaired. Corporate farms are held to high standards and most maintain a vet on staff for health monitoring.

So if a (radical) Muslim gets the swine flu, he then has pig DNA in his blood stream right? ... That, along with the chicken and Mexican DNA right?

Next to Jew DNA pig DNA is the most horrid impurity that can be imagined in the (radical) Muslim world right?

That would definitely be grounds for immediate suicide and burning of the infected body ... right?

This Mexican swine flu is starting to show up in the Middle East right?

our pork has been so clean that you can eat it medium rare. try that in some other countries. i think large worms would be a problem.

Woodporter,

It's not in rural China where these breakouts occur. It is in mass chicken farms in China. Check out the frozen stir fry section and chicken stir fry stuff at your local food store and see how much of it comes from China. This stuff is mass produced. I've been to China and the outdoor food markets and it is true that to someone like me who does not understand their culture it is gross and you definitely see tons of chickens in small cages but it's the mass production (for export) to make a buck.

The outbreak in Mexico probably came from a mass pig farm and not a little family farm.

Momar:

Just in case you haven't heard, the Israeli gov't calls the affliction Mexican flu.

Apparently, there is more than one tribal philsophies whose members cannot even utter the word ‘swine.'

Sasquatch at 10:35 a.m.

Well said!

Mexican flu? I suppose "white steak flu" might be the equivalent of a thumb in the eye to easily upset "kosher noshers" back in Tel Aviv.

Getting back to the South China delta lands and flu producing rice farming practices:

1. Flood paddy to produce algae fertilizer and grow rice plants. Use ducks to eat weeds. Duck shit containing remarkable variety of pathogens sinks to bottom of paddy.

2. Drain paddy. Harvest rice straw/grain. Release pigs into drying paddy to consume melange of left behind "nutrients". Pigs work like bio-reactors mutating duck flu virus into new exciting flu virus.

3. Climate, population density, and lack of sanitation, combined with complete disinterest, spreads new virus to an eager, waiting world.

4. Someone dear to you dies from flu? Sue the Chinese government and picket their embassy. That kind of protest will really get results. That's why the ecoweenies spend all their time there waving protest signs.

I lost my appetite for pork after discovering Pickton fed the 50 or so women he murdered to the pigs on his pig farm. He had sold some of these human flesh eating pigs b4 the RCMP raided his farm.

I think that the pigs that were left on his property at that time were slaughtered and the contents of there stomaches examined for evidence. I can not confirm these reports. Doesn't really matter now, the damage has been done and I can not eat pork anymore.

I enjoyed my bacon and eggs this morning.