THE KITCHEN’S ‘PETRI’ DISH: Food from factory farming is the world’s most dangerous bioweapon

Pathogens such as H5N1, which kills 56% of infected human beings, are brewing in factory farms. This meets the WHO’s definition of a bioweapon. Yet the authorities are targeting whistleblowers that expose these dangers rather than the corporations endangering us all.

WAYNE HSIUNG: Pathogens such as H5N1, which kills 56% of infected human beings, are brewing in factory farms — and the industry knows this and yet still continues to spread these organisms. This meets the WHO’s definition of a bioweapon. Yet the authorities are targeting whistleblowers that expose these dangers… rather than the corporations endangering us all…

Take, for example, the list of diseases we have found in California poultry farms:

Infectious bronchitis virus. A deadly coronavirus that causes massive losses in poultry farms, and that sickened Ethan and Jax in the recent Foster Farms trial. This disease causes airsacculitis, the inflammation of the air sacs of the lungs, and animals sickened will often slowly suffocate to death, as their bodies become oxygen starved.

Enterococcus. This enterprising microorganism has been found in multiple local chicken farms, and causes devastating gastrointestinal maladies and wound infections in human beings. It is particularly devastating in the hospital environment, where people coming in for other treatment often become sickened. One study found death rates as high as 66.7% – and genetic tracing has shown that the infections are coming from chicken farms. Yes, the very chicken farms where we have found widespread disease. Thousands of people die from these infections every year.

Reovirus. An RNA virus that targets the joints and ligaments of birds, this pathogen that most likely caused Rose, the tiny hen we rescued from Petaluma Poultry in 2018, from being able to walk. The virus fills up sensitive joints and organs and leads to mass deaths in both domestic and wild birds, including crows.

And many, many more. This is not what you should find in your food – and would be impossible to find in plant-based foods, which have a different biological composition and therefore attract different microorganisms. (Interestingly, lab-grown meats can cause similar risks, which is one of the reasons scaling the process has been hard; the vats in which the meat is grown must be incredibly bio-secure, which is expensive to maintain.) But it is the pattern we see over and over again, not just in chicken farms, but in the entire factory farming system…

To date, however, even critics of the industry have construed the threat posed by pathogens in factory farms as a product of poor consumer choices or, at worst, inadequate regulatory oversight. It’s treated as something like an aesthetic problem. “If only those factory farms would pick up their litter.” But it is not. The public health risks of factory farms are a deliberate existential threat on the future of humanity, and as such, they are accurately described as a bioweapon. SOURCE…

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