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Opening and ending paragraphs excerpted
from an update from Vanishing Borders: Protecting the Planet in the Age of
Globalization Lead
Quote: “Though estimates vary widely,
experts project that as many as three hundred thousand to five hundred
thousand Britons could die
over the next thirty years from BSE, depending on the incubation period and the
success of past attempts to eliminate the disease from the British herd.” Microbial
Migrations By Hilary French and Brian Halweil, in Orion Magazine online, Jan. 07, 2004 @ http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/04-1om/MadCow.html TWO YEARS AGO, the world news media presented viewers with the garish
spectacle of thousands of animal carcasses going up in smoke in the British
countryside in a desperate attempt to contain the outbreak of foot-and-mouth
disease there. The effort destroyed more than two million animals and brought
tremendous suffering to the country's farm families. In mid-March of that year,
the press reported a related event, in which U.S. federal agents raided a
Vermont farm to seize sheep suspected of carrying the biological agents
implicated in mad cow disease, the frightening ailment that has led to the
slaughter of nearly two hundred thousand cattle in Europe. The two diseases are not related
in any biological sense, of course. Foot-and-mouth is caused by a virus and is
not thought to be transmissible to humans, while mad cow is caused by a prion -
a poorly understood snip of protein - and is responsible for nearly one hundred
human fatalities. The two diseases are connected, however, by the economic environment that allows
them to thrive. Their spread from
isolated incidents to potentially global epidemics can be traced to trade that
crisscrosses the globe, growing international migration, and the practices of
industrial agriculture. For most of history, natural
boundaries such as mountains, deserts, and ocean currents have served to
isolate ecosystems and many of the species they contain. But rapid growth in
trade and travel in recent decades has made these physical barricades
permeable. More than five billion tons of goods were shipped across the world's
oceans and other waterways in 1999, over six times as much as in 1955. More
people are flying greater distances than ever before, with some two million
people now crossing an international border every day. This explosion in the
movement of goods and people across international borders is fast leading to
the spread of infectious disease as well as ecological disruptions with
unpredictable consequences. Nascent
efforts at international cooperation are struggling
to deal with the problems posed by today's burgeoning microbial migrations. Although
mad cow disease (officially known as bovine spongiform encephalitis or BSE) is
much less contagious than foot-and-mouth, it presents a far graver risk for
humans. Mad cow spreads when an animal consumes feed containing the remnants of
infected animals, and humans get it by eating infected meat. Since 1986, the
year mad cow disease was detected in the U.K., British meat has been shipped
around the world. So have British feed products, which can harbor this poorly
understood illness. Though estimates vary
widely, experts project that as many as three hundred thousand to five hundred
thousand Britons could die over the next thirty years from BSE, depending on
the incubation period and the success of past attempts to eliminate the disease
from the British herd. Mad
cows have already shown up in nearly a dozen European nations, Canada, and,
more recently, in the United States. The United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization has declared that all nations should consider themselves at risk,
but many seem unprepared to deal with the threat. A 2000 survey by the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration found that one in
four American slaughterhouses and feed processing plants fails to take measures to avert mad cow disease, such as the proper labeling of feed
that contains animal parts and implementing systems to prevent commingling of
cattle feed with feed for other animals. …WHILE RECENT OUTBREAKS of livestock disease have
inspired new interest in more localized agriculture, they have at the same time
dramatized the need to step up cooperation across
international borders to combat shared health and ecological perils. Countries have in fact been working together on these matters
for decades, harmonizing regulations for trade in animals and animal products
across borders. But an inherent weakness in the international agreements,
especially in the U.S., is the tendency for international standard-setting
bodies to be disproportionately swayed by the very industries they were created
to oversee. It is
becoming clear that a global governance system that will be up to the task of
stemming today's rising tide of biotic mixing will be fundamentally different
in character from the post-World War II system in place today. Instead of standard-setting bodies dominated by
industry, there will have to be new forums where citizens, farmers,
companies, and governments can collaborate across political borders to reshape
current agriculture and industrial practices so that they protect the health of
the planet's people and natural systems. The silver lining to the
foot-and-mouth and mad cow scares of 2001, and those of today, may be the added
political will they may generate for setting this transition in motion.” >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> |
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