Factory hog farms breed infectious viruses

Peach Bottom Township is engaged in a showdown with state officials over a proposed factory hog farm. Since 2007, the York County community has been fighting a local family's plan to turn its 400-hog farm into a 4,400-hog concentrated animal feeding operation, also known as a CAFO or factory farm.

Opponents believe animal waste from the facility would contaminate local wells, pollute the air, and lower property values, among other concerns. Based on the experience of other farm communities, their worries are well-founded. Now, amid daily news of a potential swine-flu pandemic, they can add the risk of a potentially deadly infectious disease to the list.

It's well-established that hogs are highly susceptible to contracting viruses from other mammals and from birds. This makes them ideal vessels for breeding new virus strains, which can then be spread by the hogs, their waste, or the workers who come in contact with either.

None of this is news; it's been known since at least the early 20th century, when tens of millions of people died from swine flu in the span of just two years. For years, in fact, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been wondering just when a new pandemic would arise.

A 2007 CDC report on emerging infectious diseases among hogs and hog-farm workers anticipated that a "highly virulent" virus like the one responsible for the 1918-1919 pandemic "may similarly be readily transmitted among and between pigs and humans." The same report went on to say, "Study data suggest that swine workers ... are at increased risk of zoonotic [animal-to-human] influenza virus infections."

Concentrated feeding operations - massive facilities where thousands of animals are closely confined - are ideal breeding grounds for new infectious agents. While workers at these huge hog-breeding operations are supposed to wear sterilized clothing to minimize the spread of disease, that hasn't diminished their exposure, judging by hog workers' elevated antibody levels and "self-reported influenza-like illness," according to the CDC. In fact, the threat is so well-known that, in 2004, the owner of a Nebraska factory farm told a reporter he seldom visits his own facility due to "bio-security" concerns.

Bolstering the concerns about water quality in Peach Bottom, the Environmental Protection Agency has identified industrial agriculture as a source of pollution in more than 40 percent of the nation's streams, rivers, and lakes. And factory farms are among the leading producers of nitrous oxide, ammonia, and other harmful air pollutants, according to the EPA.

Factory farms also tend to destroy independent family farms, pit neighbor against neighbor, and tear communities apart. Both proponents and detractors of the Peach Bottom facility may well be able to describe these effects firsthand.

As nations tighten their borders in an effort to stop the spread of the latest permutation of swine flu - and Mexican officials point to a million-pig farm as the likely source - consumers and communities deserve a more complete picture of the true cost of factory farms.