Factory Farms, CAFOs, Are Breeding Ground for Superbugs

Germ warfare is a grave threat to the American population.
See the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at the
Milken Institute School for Public Heath

'The most diabolical villain could not design a better system for creating superbugs than factory farms'

Madison, Wisconsin — Designing drug-resistant superbugs is the purview of demented bad actors, like black biology out a Richard Preston or Daniel Kala bio-terrorist thriller.

The prospect of malignant perpetrators releasing superbugs on unsuspecting populations ought to alarm everyone from the most dull state representative to research scientists working at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The problem is government-subsidized industry is creating superbugs and the worst perpetrator is the factory farm, or CAFO, concentrated animal feeding operation, aka feedlot, or in the words of micro-biologist, Lance Price, "diabolical villain(s)" working out of a "fecal wasteland."

Dr. Lance B. Price is the Director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center (@battlesuperbugs) and professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health (#GWSPH).

Price is sounding the alarm on this grave and growing threat of Big Ag against everyone else.

If you live in Wisconsin, the last seven years have seen the complete abdication of public health by the Scott Walker adminstration in favor of actively promoting and aiding Big Ag against the population.

Below is an excerpt and video of Price's TEDx talk Manhattan delivered Mar 11, 2014.

From Dr. Price:

I track super-bugs. I use DNA to see where these things are coming from. On one hand my job is super-exciting and fun because I get to see how these amazing little microbes exchange genes, pick up mutations and become resistant to antibiotics and then take off around the world. ...

On the other hand my job is pretty depressing for some of the same reasons but also because I see the victims of these super-bugs. I've met the victims who've barely survived with their lives and sadly I've met parents who've lost their children to these superbugs.

And this, (superbugs), is just a cute name that we use for anti-biopic-resistant bacteria. So, these are bacteria that are resistant to our best antibiotics.

And it turns out that the CDC is saying that those parents that our losing children are not so rare. 23,000 Americans die, this is a conservative estimate, 23,000 die of super-bug infections each year. And so understanding their origins is really essential. And on some levels it's really simple, it's just a matter of evolution. So let's pretend for a minute that this is a very small group of bacteria. Bacteria usually travel in packs of billions. Every now and then when you have a big group of bacteria, one of them is going to pick up a mutation or a gene from another bacterium that makes them resistant to antibiotics.

If that's happening in an environment where you have a lot of antibiotics, then the susceptible bacteria, that is the non-resistant ones, are going to die off and the resistant ones are going to go on to multiply.

And the thing about bacteria is that they multiply very quickly. So E-coli, for instance, can double every thirty minutes, and you go a from a single cell, a single drug-resistant e-coli, to a billion, more than a billion, in 24 hours. This is simple Darwinian evolution, but Darwinian evolution is real time. So, if you're like me and you're interested in knowing where these super-bugs are coming from then you have to go to the places where we're using a lot of antibiotics. ...

Factory Farms or CAFOs

We're using 30-million pounds of antibiotics in food-animal production each year, 30-million pounds. The best estimates suggest only 20 percent of those antibiotics to used to treat sick animals.

Eighty percent are being used as production tools. They're being used to make animals grow faster. They're being used to prevent disease, or treat diseases, that are occurring just because of the way we are raising animals. The industry calls these 'production diseases' but rather than change production, we are just using antibiotics. ...

When I see these (animal) factories, when I see these operations, ... I see factories making trillions and trillions and trillions of drug-resistance bacteria.

The most diabolical villain could not design a better system for creating super-bugs than the modern CAFO. You have everything you need. ...

See also:

• Horrigan, Leo, Lawrence, Robert S., Walker, Polly, "How Sustainable Agriculture Can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture," Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Livable Future, July 9, 1999, n.d. web 24 Sept. 2014
•  Hribar, Carrie. Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities (n.d.): n. pag. National Association of Local Boards of Health. Center for Disease Control. Web.
• Ikerd, Dr. John. "The Inevitable Economic, Ecological, and Social Consequences of CAFOs." University of Missouri-Columbia. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. [See also Past and Recent Papers of Dr. John E. Ikerd.]

North Dakota Beats Big Ag Three-to-One in Citizens' Referendum

 "North Dakotans overwhelmingly rejected a haphazard law
passed by the state legislature to open the floodgates
to corporate farming," celebrates the Dakota Resource Council.
(North Dakota Secretary of State election results)

Corporate Ag is not interested in a show of hands, but North Dakota citizens are.

North Dakota citizens blocked a measure allowing industrialized agriculture to organize and consolidate factory farms using a corporate business model that would destroy family farming in North Dakota, following the trend in other states.

Voters passed referendum measure One, with over a three-to-one majority, 99,045 votes (75.70 percent) to 31,787 votes (24.30 percent).

The measure legally rejects a corporate-backed law passed last year.

Citizens used the North Dakota initiative process to reject a pending state statute backed by Big Agricultural interests and passed and signed into law last year.

The rejection in family-farmer friendly North Dakota was expected, and shines a light on the predatory nature of proliferating, industrialized agriculture that is destroying family farms across the country.

There are over 30,000 family-operated farms and ranches in North Dakota, (Bosman, New York Times).

The law overturned by North Dakota voters would have allowed corporate ownership of dairy and swine facilities on up to 640 acres of land, (Center for Rural Affairs).

Republican state governments, sometimes with the help of some Democratic Party officials, are engaged in pushing state laws and other initiatives to increase foreign ownership of American corporate agricultural entities on up to 640 acres of land.

In 2014, reports emerged from Wisconsin showing the Republican governor and the Republican attorney general working to allow foreign ownership of up to 640 acres of agricultural land, the same measure of land North Dakota would have given corporations the right to own and sell, (Ivey, The Capital Times), (Mal Contends).

Communities surrounding corporate ag operations, (called CAFOs), are fighting back but often face uphill battles against heavily funded corporate ag operations, and politicians whose allegiance Big Ag purchases.

Big Ag will litigate Measure One which now has the force of law.

"The North Dakota Farm Bureau, a lobbying organization that has farmer members, has adopted an alternative tactic in case the new law is defeated that takes aim at the 1932 law banning corporate farming. Earlier this month, it filed a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the law, arguing that it is discriminatory and unconstitutional," (Bosman, New York Times).

If the massively polluting industrialized agricultural model of corporate ag is held accountable to communities and citizens, the popular sentiment in North Dakota may signal the need for a lot of lawyers for Big Ag.

"We always believed that the people of North Dakota would agree that the family farm structure is best for our state’s economy and our communities," said Mark Watne, North Dakota Farmers Union president. "The results tonight are a strong message that the people don’t want corporate farming in North Dakota," (Pates, Grand Forks Herald).

From the Dakota Resource Council (DRC):

BISMARCK, ND— DRC members and allies celebrated a victory on Tuesday night after North Dakotans overwhelmingly rejected a haphazard law passed by the state legislature to open the floodgates to corporate farming.

:It was a hard-fought campaign and we worked diligently to educate North Dakotans and turn them out to vote. We are very pleased with the result," said DRC Chair Craig Scott, who lives in Burleigh County. "The fight is not over, and we will continue organizing and building people power to make North Dakota a great place to live."

Since 1932, North Dakota’s anti-corporate farming law has facilitated the growth of one of the strongest agricultural economies in the world. Measure 1 was a referral of SB 2351, a law rushed through the 2015 legislative session by proponents of corporate farming in an attempt to increase the number of cows and pigs in North Dakota. The law would have allowed non-family corporate ownership of land for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

"This may have increased the number of animals but it would have decreased the number of family farmers and squeezed the wealth out of rural communities," said DRC member Father Tom Graner of Pierce County. "People in North Dakota made it clear they understand the dangers of corporations running our farms."

The defeat of Measure 1 is a testament to the power of ordinary people standing up and making their voices heard. DRC investigated what happens in other states with corporate agriculture operations and found stories of destruction, intimidation, and devaluation.

"Throughout other parts of our country that allow corporate farming, it is very clear that large confinement dairy and hog operations do not increase rural employment or promote rural economic development," said DRC member Jeri Lynn Bakken of Adams County, responding to the impacts of corporate farming on other states. "Corporate feeding operations employ far fewer and lower-paid workers than the family farmers that they inevitably displace."

In the shadow of the campaign against corporate farming and Measure 1, the town of Buffalo, ND is dealing with a proposed 9,000-hog factory. This is precisely the type of so-called animal agriculture North Dakotans rejected by voting No on Measure 1. A county-level approval decision is still pending. The full suite of videos, plus more information about Measure 1 and anti-corporate farming efforts, is available at http://drcinfo.org/familyfarms.

Although the anti-corporate farming law is supported by an overwhelming majority of North Dakotans, there are still people working to attack it. A few weeks ago, the North Dakota Farm Bureau filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the popular and effective anti-corporate farming law. That was a last ditch effort to try to undermine democracy and the will of North Dakotans.

"Men like my grandfather understood the way to build strong communities was to ensure family farmers owned the land they worked and lived in the communities they served," said Bakken. "By rejecting corporate farming, North Dakota becomes the trendsetter for a non-corporate model of modern agriculture that people around the country, and even the world, will want to emulate."
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See also CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories.

Election Day: Bernie Sanders, Yes; N.D. Corporate Ag Referendum, No

Election Day and the Parable of Smithfield Foods, [Not good. Irresponsible, and owned by China]

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Update: Small farmers and clean water advocates winning North Dakota Corporate Dairy and Swine Farming Referendum three-to-one in early returns as No votes block Big Ag.
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Bernie Sanders should stay and fight to Philly and beyond, irrespective of today's D.C. vote.

Two facts:

Hillary Clinton is demonstrating her Queen of Chaos side in the wake of Orlando.

California has some 2,000,000 ballots uncounted after obstructing non-Democratic Party-registering voters, (Op-Ed News) almost as badly as New York did.

North Dakota

North Dakotans should stop corporate agriculture, aka Big Ag, from taking over their state and vote No on the North Dakota Corporate Dairy and Swine Farming Referendum.

A No vote would have national repercussions in killing a Republican-enacted law giving a green light to industrialized agriculture, as corporate industrialized ag has swept the nation, smashing small farmers, massively polluting the country while inflicting cruel, heartless operations against living beings. [Enough to make me consider listening to my Dr. and stop eating too much fry food and steak.]

"While the debate is very much focused on maintaining the character of North Dakota, it also taps into widespread fears about the disappearance of family farms throughout the United States and the spread of big corporations and their farming methods into rural America," reports Julie Bosman, (New York Times).

Results after 9:00 Eastern at North Dakota Secretary of State's Election Results site,  (Senate Bill No. 2351 2015 North Dakota Session Laws, Ch 84)).

See also the Dakota Resource Council, and the North Dakota Farmers Union.

Big Ag is a political monster.

In Wisconsin Big Ag is single-handedly keeping Scott Walker in office, a political reality obscured by the Repulbican dominance of racist, white suburbs ringing Milwaukee.

Wisconsin and North Dakota have plenty of company in the United States, where few realize Big Ag is becoming increasingly owned by China, with the threat of turning large swaths of rural America into foreign-owned colonies.

As noted in these pages, said Gordon Stevenson, Wisconsin DNR runoff management chief (2001-2011):

Consider the Parable of Smithfield Foods. In 1936, a family built a small hog slaughtering and packing plant in Smithfield, Virginia. Their products were very good, the plant grew and town of Smithfield came to be known as the Ham Capital of the World. During the 1980s, the company vertically integrated. In plain English, that means they not only owned the processing facilities, but they figured out that if they controlled the production of hogs as well as processing they could be more profitable. By the end of 1998, Smithfield owned not only multiple packaging plants but 460 large hog farms and had contracts with 2,100 other pork producers 12 states. Smithfield Foods had become the number one pork producer in the United States and was growing internationally. They continued to grow, aggregating the assets of American pork production into larger and fewer blocks. Next time you go shopping, checkout the pork products. You will see labels like Morrell, Farmland, Armour and others. Smithfield owns all of those companies and multiple others. On September 26, 2013, Smithfield Foods and all of its holdings were sold to another company for $7.1 billion. [Bittman, NYT] The name of the company is Shuanghui International Holdings Limited.[Shuanghui changed its name this year to the 'WH Group' (BusinessWeek)]

Yes, a company from the People’s Republic of China now owns 26 percent of all of the assets of the American pork industry. This is the largest single Chinese purchase to date of American assets. China has successfully established an offshore economic colony on American soil. Let’s leave Virginia and Beijing and return to Wisconsin. We have dairy CAFOs in Wisconsin that are in the process of aggregating the assets of Wisconsin’s dairy industry into larger and fewer blocks. Any of those blocks can be bought and sold. I don’t believe I need to spell out why I told you the Parable of Smithfield Foods.

Twenty-six percent and spreading fast.

Family Farms, Yes; Corporate Agriculture, No

Industrialized agriculture is spreading in Wisconsin and across the nation.

It's toxic, cruel, predatory and without conscience.

This corporate model is also the first step towards foreign ownership of large swaths of American land on which foreign-owned corporate agriculture can pollute with impunity, (Mal Contends), transforming rural America into colonial status, (Mal Contends).

Whether the corporate entities owning industrialized agricultural operations are publicly traded or not, the model of corporate farmers is a clear and present danger to any community where these factory farms extract natural resources and inflict health and pollution costs onto the adjoining region and beyond.

In North Dakota, the North Dakota Corporate Dairy and Swine Farming Referendum, also known as Referred Measure 1, is on the June 14, 2016, ballot in North Dakota.

John Ikerd has the story, North Dakota as a parable for the nation.

By John Ikerd

FAIRFIELD, Iowa—Measure 1, the North Dakota referendum on corporate farming, is part of a national political strategy to remove all legal obstacles to the corporate takeover of American agriculture.

The campaign features a number of corporate myths:

Myth 1: Corporate farmers have the same values as traditional family farmers.

Reality: Traditionally, family farming has been a way of life as well as a means of making a living. True family farmers do not compromise their ethical or social values for the sake of profits. But large, publicly traded corporations have no ability to express the ethical or social values of their shareholders.

Corporations are legally obligated to serve the "common interests" of their investors. But the only "common interest" of the diverse investors in a large corporation is their interest in maximizing returns.

A corporation is not a person. It is a purely economic entity.

Myth 2: Large confinement dairy and hog operations will increase rural employment and economic development.

Reality: Large confinement animal feeding operations (CAFOs) employ far fewer and lower-paid workers than the family farmers the operations displace.

More than 50 years of research, including at UND, confirms that CAFOs depress rural economies, increase poverty and degrade rural communities' quality of life.

I recently compared a typical 1,000-cow dairy CAFO with a sufficient number of 50-cow organic dairy farms to produce the same amount of milk, using statistics provided by the University of Wisconsin Center for Dairy Profitability. The dairy CAFO would employ one manager and 15 milkers, while the 60 organic dairy farms would employ 30 dairy farmers and 30 milkers/workers.

As federal statistics confirm, whenever CAFOs have taken over industries—poultry, beef, pork, dairy—more than 90 percent of independent producers are lost.

CAFOs let corporations extract, not develop, rural wealth.

Myth 3: Corporate agriculture is essential to meet Americans' food needs.

Reality: New approaches to farming and food production are emerging in response to growing concerns about our industrial food system.

Genetic engineering, air and water pollution, antibiotic resistance, animal welfare and carcinogenic pesticides are just a few of these concerns.

The natural, organic and local food movements are the most visible responses to these concerns.

Free-range, pasture-based, grass-fed, humanely raised and hormone and antibiotic free are common labels for animal products.

Farmers markets and co-op grocery stores such as those in Grand Forks, Bismarck and Fargo provide markets for these products. Multi-farm food networks and home-delivery programs let sustainable farmers connect with hundreds of thousands of customers in distant cities.

This is the future of food and farming—not CAFOs.

Myth 4: Corporate farming is necessary to meet the demands of a growing global population.

Reality: Contrary to popular belief, today's industrial agriculture doesn't feed the people of the world. It mainly produces feed for animals and fuel for automobiles.

Most of the world's people feed themselves. United Nations statistics indicate that at least 70 percent of the world's population get their food from small scale family farms.

U.N. studies also show that production on these farms could be doubled or tripled without using industrial technologies or relying on outside corporate funding.

Myth 5: Corporate investments are needed to finance agricultural expansion.

Reality: North Dakota farmers have other means of financing legitimate agricultural expansions under existing laws.

Besides, corporations probably want the right to buy farmland more than the right to operate CAFOs. They know CAFOs are not a sustainable system of production and will face growing public demand for effective regulation. They also know there always will be a need for land to produce food, not matter how it is farmed.

About 70 percent of U.S. farmland is projected to change hands within the next 20 years. Farmland already nearly tops of the list of opportunities for speculative capital investments.

North Dakota's current anti-corporate farming law is an obstacle to such investments.
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Ikerd is a professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri. At the invitation of the Dakota Resource Council, he recently spoke against Measure 1 in four cities across North Dakota.

Family Farming and Sustainability

Interconnectedness of the family with the farm makes the farm a "family farm" and the family a "farm family."

True family farms are and have always been a way of life, not just a massive business enterprise.
- CAFOs don't cut it as family farms
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In 2014, I was commissioned by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations to develop a paper on “Family Farming in North America” in recognition of the International Year of Family Farming. I presented the paper at the Global Dialogue on Family Farmingat the FAO in Rome, and an executive summary of the paper, along with other regional papers, was published in the FAO publication: Roots (page 31). We are still waiting for publication of the full texts of our regional papers. However, a “draft” of my paper is available on-line at https://sites.google.com/site/familyfarmsna/. This blog piece focuses on the “multifunctional” aspects of family farms and the relevance of multifunctionality to sustainability. I am also posting a paper on my homepage johnikerd.com that relates multifunctionality to the sustainability of “small farms.”

By Dr. John Ikerd - "Family Farming and Multifunctionality"

Creekside Family Farm, Minooka, Illinois

In spite of centuries of family farming, no generally accepted definition of the “family farm” has emerged,. The likelihood of a farm being a true “family farm” decreases along gradients from family labor to paid employees, family capital to non-farm investments, independent operator to contract producer, land owner to cash renter, single proprietor to corporation, and producing for families and local markets to producing for international markets. A family that provides the labor for a farm, makes the management decisions, and owns and lives on the farm is more likely to feel a deep, personal sense of connectedness to the farm, which characterizes family farms.

It’s the sense of interconnectedness of the family with the farm makes the farm a “family farm” and the family a “farm family.” Such farms and the families are inseparable. The same farm with a different family would be a different farm, and the same family with a different farm would be a different family. True family farms represent a way of life rather than just a means of making an economic living. Such farms are managed in ways that reflects the social and ethical values of the farm family as well as the economic value of farming: they are intentionally multifunctionality. Family owned and operated farms that give the economic bottom line priority over concerns for their communities and the future of humanity are managed as mono-functional farms. Such farms still have social and ecological effects on society and nature, but these effects are generally negative rather than positive.

Those of us who value traditional family farms are often seen as naïve or idealistic. However, it is not naïve to be concerned about sustainability. The controversies surrounding family farms versus industrial farms invariably center on questions of agricultural sustainability: The ability to meet the basic food needs of all of the present without diminishing opportunities for those of future generations. Sustainability is inherently multifunctional in that it has three key dimensions: ecological integrity, social equity, and economic viability. A farm that doesn’t protect and reinvest in the productivity of nature and society cannot be sustained economically. Only farms that are managed multifunctionally are capable of addressing the multiple dimension of sustainability.

Canadian Family Farm

The historical root meanings of the words “farm” and “farmer” suggest that economics has always been an important aspect of farms and farming. However, these words have also always had important social and ethical dimensions. Historically, farmers have managed their farms multifunctionally. The more recent emphasis of industrial agriculture on economic efficiency invariably leads to extraction and exploitation of the natural and human resources that ultimately must sustain long-run agricultural productivity. True family farms are and have always been a way of life, not just a business, and thus have a natural, ingrained advantage in meeting the multiple needs of all of both present and future generations.

Hunger facts: No kid hungry

Industrial agriculture has proven incapable of providing even basic food security. About one-in-six residents of the US and one-in-eight Canadians is classified as “food insecure.”[i],[ii]  Many can get enough food to satisfy their need for calories or energy only by buying cheap industrial food products that fail to meet their nutritional needs for healthy, active lifestyles. As a result, diet-related illnesses in the US are rampant, including obesity and related diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, and various types of cancers. Globally, development experts attribute the persistent hunger to increases in population made possible by increased food production of the Green Revolution. However, many of those living and working in developing nations have a very different view. Numerous studies sponsored by the United Nations indicate that multifunctional farms are key for meeting the food needs of a growing global population. In the U.S., the challenge is agricultural sustainability, not agricultural productivity.

USDA – South Bld., Washington, D.C.

Food security has been the logical justification for farm policies in the past. However, with growing ecological and social equity concerns, a more encompassing farm policy mandate for the future is agricultural sustainability. Thus, farm policies that support and promote agricultural sustainability must support and promote intentional multifunctionality. Examples include:

• reducing emphasis on subsidies for industrial agriculture that incentivize specialization and corporatization at the expense of diversification and family farms, beginning with programmes linked to specific commodities including corn, soybeans, wheat and rice—including subsidized crop insurance
•  reducing economic risks for multifunctional family farms for example through subsidized ‘whole-farm revenue insurance’ with lower premiums for more diversified farming operations
• subsidizing farm families, not farm production by linking government payments to family size not farm size – subsidizing people not production.

Policies supporting multifunctional farming must extend beyond farming operations to: 1) Ensuring basic health care for multifunctional farm families as well as workforce’s compensation and other “fringe benefits.” 2) Restoring farmland to “the commons” by permanently zoning enough farmland for food production to meet the food needs of all of both current and future generations. 3) Develop land tenure policies that support more farms and farmers, local markets, local control, and food democracy – ensuring that land is use for the common good. 5) Redirecting public research and education to serve public interests, giving priority to on-farm research and with-farmer education. Farming must be treated as a learned profession.

In summary, the sustainability of food production for the benefit of all of the “world’s people” can be and should be ensured by policies that support a global network of local community-based food systems that support and are supported by multifunctional family farms. Multifunctional farmers are endowed with the inherent potential to farm sustainably, and sustainable farms are essential to achieving sustainable food and agricultural systems. Public policies thus must support a transition from mono- to multi-functional farming.

- John Ikerd
 [Republished with permission.]
Below is a video of John Ikerd speaking in Madison, Wisconsin.