H1N1 (Swine Flu): The Health and Welfare Implications for Humans and Animals

Food Safety and Inspection Service Recalls

Factsheets

Plant foods improve human health, while animal 'foods' degrade it. The most comprehensive study to date regarding the relationship between diet and human health found that the consumption of animal-derived ‘food’ products was linked with "diseases of affluence" such as heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, and cancer. T. Colin Campbell's landmark research in The China Project found a pure vegetarian (i.e. vegan) diet to be healthiest. Dr. Campbell estimates that "80 to 90% of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age - simply by adopting a plant-based diet."

The meat, poultry, dairy and egg industries employ technological short cuts— as drugs, hormones, and other chemicals — to maximize production. Under these conditions, virulent pathogens that are resistant to antibiotics are emerging. These new ‘supergerms,’ whose evolution is traceable directly to the overuse of antibiotics in factory farming, have the potential to cause yet unknown human suffering and deaths.

Peculiar new diseases have been amplified by aberrant agribusiness practices. For example, "Mad Cow Disease" (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE), a fatal dementia affecting cattle, spread throughout Britain when dead cows were fed to living cows. When people ate cows with "Mad Cow Disease," they got Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a fatal dementia that afflicts humans.

Another farm animal disease beginning to jeopardize human health is avian influenza. In Hong Kong, where scores of people have died from the so-called "bird- flu," over one million chickens have been destroyed in the panic to stop the spread of the disease.

Millions of Americans are infected, and thousands die every year from contaminated animal ‘food’ products. Despite repeated warnings from consumer advocates, the USDA's meat inspection system remains grossly inadequate, and consumers are now being told to "expect" animal products to be tainted.

Meanwhile, the agribusiness industry, rather than advising consumers to curtail their intake of animal products, has devised extreme measures (overcooking, antibiotics, etc.) to help consumers circumvent the hazards of animal products and maintain their gross over-consumption of meat and dairy.