Linda Diebel, Toronto Star [1], May 01, 2009 – Sewage-filled lagoons at a pig farm in eastern Mexico – a product of the North American free trade deal – are suspected of creating ground zero conditions for swine flu in this country.
Environmentalists argue lax regulations in the factory farming that boomed in Mexico right after the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and the U.S. are making people sick – and not just with swine flu.
"You might call this the `NAFTA flu,'" said Rick Arnold, co-ordinator of Common Frontiers, a Canadian coalition focusing on Latin America and issues of economic integration.
He argues multinationals are getting away with dire conditions not allowed north of the border.
Environmental groups three years ago began protesting against operations at the Carroll Farms in Veracruz, jointly operated by U.S. pork giant Smithfield Farms.
The first confirmed case of swine flu originated with a 5-year-old boy from the town of La Gloria, near the farm. He recovered.
Medical officials have not pinpointed where the outbreak began.
And from its Virginia headquarters, Smithfield officials insist there is no evidence linking their operations to the disease.
Smithfield Farms, the world's largest pork producer with $12 billion in annual sales, opened Carroll Farms in 1994, calling it a "joint venture.
At home, the company was fined $12.6 million (U.S.) in 1997 after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disclosed it was dumping raw pig sewage into a river flowing into Chesapeake Bay.
The health ministry, which earlier said 168 people were believed killed by swine flu in Mexico, yesterday would confirm only 12 of those deaths as being from swine flu and would not say how many more cases were suspected.
The air in Mexico City, once called the "most polluted" by the World Health Organization, is loaded with human fecal matter, gases, dust and other toxic materials.
"The pollution affects our eyes, throats and lungs," said Dr. Erendira Gallardo Lobera, a general practitioner. She said the Mexican government should take stronger measures to ensure residents of the capital aren't breathing in rat and dog feces with their oxygen.
While Mexicans continue to wear masks and stay indoors in a country virtually shut down, people say the government should be more forthcoming with information.
"I think the government isn't giving us the correct statistics about infected cases," said restaurant employee Jose Gutierrez Hernandez. "I fear there's not enough medicine to control this outbreak and there is no vaccine against swine flu."
President Felipe Calderon promised his officials would provide timely information, adding as a "parent and as a person, there is nothing more important to me than the life and health of the Mexican people."
From the Mexican embassy in Ottawa, spokesperson Alberto Lozano Merino said Mexican authorities are not concerned with pig farm operations near the suspected epicentre of the swine flu outbreak. Authorities acted quickly to send Veracruz samples to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga., and have "followed every regulation and protocol."
However, the Veracruz newspaper La Marcha, as well as the Mexico City daily, La Jornada, reported widespread cases of people falling ill near the pig farm in March.
Several local groups argue the farms should be closed pending extensive environmental and health reviews of an operation that raises 950,000 pigs a year and doesn't have a sewage treatment plant.
In a 2006 article on Smithfield's Virginia operations, Rolling Stone reported: "(The) pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens (and) trample each other to death.
"The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs ..."
The article said the "pipes remain closed until enough sewage accumulates in the pits to create good expulsion pressure; then the pipes are opened and everything bursts out into a large holding pond."
Yesterday, La Jornada ran a photo of a large waste-filled lagoon at Carroll Farms in Veracruz. A caption under the photo says farm officials stress the pork waste flowing into the lagoon generates "absolutely no type of contamination."
C. Larry Pope, president and CEO of Smithfield Farms, sent a letter yesterday assuring all employees the company is doing everything possible "and will continue to do so (to keep) our workers and pigs healthy."
Links:
[1] http://www.healthzone.ca/health/article/627157