One of the world’s leading experts in veterinary immunology warns that the USA is not prepared for any number of pandemics potentially as devastating as this coronavirus.
“We’re really in a dilemma,” said Dr. James Roth, director of the Center for Food Security and Public Health in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University and frequent advisor to the federal government on agro-terrorism and biosecurity.
“Our system is in danger.”
Roth watches several food-animal diseases on the move throughout the world. He ticks off some of the most worrisome:
Ebola from hogs, meningitis spread in Malaysian pigs (Nipah virus), foot-and-mouth disease, classical swine fever (hog cholera), avian influenzas and African swine fever.
“If they come into the US, we’re really not prepared,” Roth said in an interview. “Our system is in danger. Maybe this coronavirus will get people to pay attention to how fragile our food security is, and strengthen it.”
It becomes ever more urgent as world human population grows — from roughly 3 billion in 1960, to nearly 8 billion today, to a projected 9.7 billion by 2050. Food production will have to increase 70% to keep pace. Already, total meat production ballooned from 50 million tons in 1960 to more than 300 million tons today. China is driving the growth with over half the world’s pork production, increasingly raised in confinement.
A plant-based diet may work for the wealthy, who can afford nutritional supplements, Roth said, but poor people depend on meat for key proteins and amino acids. China is moving away from backyard operations because of African swine fever that cut its hog herd in half. Production is moving indoors as it has in the United States and Europe. That makes for more density and can lead to better biosecurity, but disease can sweep through rapidly once inside.
Of course, what starts in China can get to Northwest Iowa — the densest livestock area in America laden with hogs, cattle, turkeys, egg laying hens and even a few goats — in no time. Witness COVID-19.
Or the avian influenza of five years past that wiped out 35 million birds in Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota. That flu took wing in China in waterfowl, which ended up avoiding the Pacific flyway because of climate-change-induced drought, and mutated by combining with North American viruses. It landed in Iowa that spring of 2015. Shared workers from one infected egg-laying facility, someone like a load-out employee on a truck, spread the virus inside neighboring facilities housing up to five million birds. It could have come from just a few duck droppings on the boots.
Relatively new production facilities with all the latest technology, like those at Rembrandt, Iowa, were infected. Whole flocks had to be killed and composted. Buildings were disinfected and idled for months. The loss cost Iowa more than $1 billion as legions of mainly immigrant workers sat or took short hours. It did not infect humans.
“Our best practices to prevent endemic (everyday) diseases are not good enough for a new disease like avian influenza,” Roth said.
The industry and government since have imposed much more stringent biosecurity standards in confined livestock systems. No more shared workers or equipment between livestock sites, for example. It was learned that flocks need to be eradicated as soon as possible, within 24 hours. That’s easier with chickens than hogs or cattle. Test and identify virus infection quickly.
As a result, there have been no large avian influenza outbreaks since. A red flag popped up April 8 when a new highly pathogenic strain was discovered in a South Carolina turkey flock. Thirty-thousand birds were killed in an attempt to eradicate it. The site is quarantined and the region is being monitored by state veterinary authorities.
ROTH AND leading epidemiologists worry, as the nation responds to a coronavirus that emanated from an animal (probably a bat from a Chinese live market, the likes of which supposedly are now banned).
“It sort of exposed our soft underbelly,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Osterholm has been warning of just such a pandemic that could spring from animals to humans since 2005, and wrote a book about it in 2017.
African Swine Fever could hit the rampant feral swine in Missouri or Arkansas and quickly overtake commercial swine. It does not spread to humans but may infect swine herds held in such close quarters, 1,000 hogs to the typical three-building site in Iowa or Minnesota. That would eliminate exports of pork from the US and whack income of the massive US meat supply chain.
“I’m very worried it will get to the US,” Roth said by phone from Ames, home to the National Animal Disease Lab.
There is no vaccine for AFS.
All the now-familiar precautions are urged: tight border inspection, treating feed from China, stopping movement. On outbreak: eradicate and control. It could happen. China is experiencing it now.
“It is so easy for these things to come into the US,” Roth said.
ROTH SAID WE need to build up vaccine banks for foot-and-mouth (FMD) disease and hog cholera. But with no FMD outbreak here in over 90 years, it is hard to convince politicians of the necessity. In the last farm bill, $250 million per year was requested to strengthen the state diagnostic testing labs, rebuild vaccine banks and improve state disaster response capability. They got $30 million. Swine disease research was frozen in place for years at $25 million by budget sequestration imposed after the 2008 market meltdown. Questions from The Times to US senators and House ag committee aides about livestock disease research over the years have gone unanswered.
The avian flu caused a spike and then crash in egg prices that cost more than the research into preventing the flu would have. Foot-and-mouth disease could cause huge market disruptions and food shortages in a world already hungry. Even in the US, food shortages could quickly emerge if our national hog herd were hit by African Swine Fever. Worse, hog ebola could jump to humans, or the Nipah virus that spread from fruit bats in Malaysia to swine and then humans could erupt into an encephalitic outbreak.
Climate change, human encroachment into wild areas and less genetic diversity in animal populations also contribute to disease, said Dr. Christine Petersen, who studies swine-human disease interactions at the University of Iowa College of Public Health.
“We’re seeing things happen that we haven’t seen before,” she said.
She and Roth agree it stems from increasing human population and activity that doesn’t appear to be abating. Feeding those people while facing novel pandemics that spread around the world at the speed of an airplane will take a whole new resolve from government, industry and academia. Roth believes we have the technology to cope and stay ahead, if we muster the commitment.
“We need to be able to mount a quick response to disaster, and I don’t think we are well prepared for that. Better. But not good enough,” Roth said. “We haven’t had to because things have worked really well. Our food supply is high quality and inexpensive. We’re very good at that. But it is an elegant house of cards. After COVID, we will see if people are tuned in to the potential for disasters.”
Art Cullen won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing at The Storm Lake Times in Northwest Iowa, where this article first appeared. His book, “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper” (Viking Press) was recently released in paperback.
See also "Take Livestock Disease Seriously."
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2020
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