This chapter, Foer discusses the role factory farm animals and livestock play in how humanity contracts diseases. He finds that their role is a massive one. While Foer lists the hundreds of ailments and horrific diseases that plague the creatures we eat, I'll focus on one here: influenza.
In 1918, the Spanish flu (so named for the press coverage the death tolls received in Spain), was a pandemic that covered the globe. "Whereas AIDS took roughly twenty-four years to kill 24 million people, the Spanish flu killed as many in twenty-four weeks" (124). 25% of Americans became ill, and not just the elderly and very young, but healthy middle-aged people. Today, a pandemic like the Spanish flu is the World Health Organization (WHO)'s worst nightmare. "Recent history has averaged a pandemic every 27 and a half years" which means we are long overdue (125). WHO predicts 2 million to 7.4 million deaths, conservatively. The disease, be it the predicted H5N1, or another, would ruthlessly destroy not only lives, but nations.
So where would this pending catastrophe originate? Our food. Specifically, the birds. Birds are responsible for carrying "the full spectrum of flu strains as categorized by today's science: H1 through . . . H16, N1 through N9" (128). While this may sound like some Alfred Hitchcock movie, the truth is that we, humans, are susceptible to several strains of avian-carried flu. So are pigs. When an avian virus mutates with a pig virus, it can create a disease that affects humans too. This is how H1N1, the swine flu, was born. Pigs are the only animals that are vulnerable to bird, pig, and human diseases. If they should mix, the possibility of H5N1 would be very real and highly threatening.
We've heard about the horrific living conditions of chickens, the most commonly consumed bird in the USA. We've heard about the cruel and messy business of their slaughter, and we've heard how they're packaged, inflated with salts and chemicals, covered in their own feces, and shipped to our friendly neighborhood groceries. So why it should come as a surprise that "50 billion sickly, drugged birds -- birds that are the primordial source of all flu viruses. . . [and] 500 million pigs with compromised immune systems in confinement facilities. . ." are causing mutations and widespread disease (138).
As Foer goes on to discuss other food borne illnesses, strains of E. Coli, etc. I wonder just what it is that's keeping people from giving up their precious meat, in favor of health. The pathogens and antibacterial medications that farmers are pumping into their animals are being rendered useless to humans, diseases are overcoming them. At what point will we stop, look around, and realize that there is not a single antibiotic left to treat human diseases? At what point will WHO's nightmare come to pass, and the world will be a few billion doses short of life-saving medicine for a disease that came from someone's chicken, or pig meat?
Oh wait, people can't give up disease-ridden, tortured animal flesh. Where would they get their protein?
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me "but where do you get your protein?" I wouldn't need to get a job, or worry about student loans. However, I never mind answering truthfully: "plants." After reading this chapter, I can now go on to add that "excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers" (144). Eating animals is a recipe for disease, whether individually devastating, or of pandemic proportions.
I'm less worried about where I'm getting my protein from than what diseases the sick habits of this omnivorous nation have unleashed.
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