Livestock on the ‘Stead

In view of recent weeks’ events concerning an off-season outbreak of a new flu strain in Mexico that quickly spread around the world – and caused WHO to get all the way to 5 on its pandemic alert system before things eased somewhat – it’s a good idea for those of us in the 21st century’s “back to the land” movement to examine some issues with livestock production in general and how we get around those issues on our own homesteads. Many homesteaders avoid livestock, but many others keep chickens, a cow or more, goats, pigs, rabbits, and some pasture a few calves every year destined for the organic beef market. What does all this mean for us?

Thus far the new flu strain, which according to the CDC is a “unique” mixture of human, avian and swine flu strains, looks to have originated in the CAFO [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation] system of swine production for human food. These operations, where thousands of animals are confined in close quarters and intensively fed for maximum weight gain in minimum time, can according to researchers and epidemiologists serve as fertile genetic recombination factories for the various strains of influenza due to lack of good waste management practices and regulation, proximity of swine CAFOs to avian CAFOs, water contamination, worker contact with infected animals. Add to that the difficulty of dealing with viral rates of mutation as well as getting effective vaccines into production from one year to the next, and you end up with a situation of concern not only to public health authorities, but also to small producers who happen to live anywhere close to such intensive CAFO operations.

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