I wrote for Business Insider about the public health risks of the factory farm model, which the U.S. has successfully exported abroad.
“In March 2009, a five-year-old boy in El Perote, Veracruz, Mexico got sick with flu-like symptoms. Weeks later he was identified as patient zero of the H1N1 epidemic. The exact source of the sickness was never proven. But people in El Perote suspected the nearby Granjas Carroll de México factories — partially-owned by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods — was the source…
…By now, most US citizens know industrial meat operations are a source of disease and viral vectors and are unsafe places to work in a pandemic. But what few realize is that the broken US meat supply chain does not just impact Americans: we are exporting the meat, and the CAFO factory farm model, to disastrous effects. To emerge from the pandemic with a more resilient food system, we need to rebuild supply systems and reconsider agricultural policy that prioritizes profit over meeting human needs.”
Read the full article here.