In Mexico: Real Security Against Bird Flu Requires Ending Farm, Food Free Trade
Special to New Federalist
Nov. 25 (EIRNS)Mexico is the fourth-largest producer of chicken meat in the world, and fifth-largest producer of hen eggs. Some 588,000 persons are involved in the poultry industry, and the average Mexican diet relies on chicken and eggs as a principal source of animal protein, with average annual per capita chicken consumption in the range of 23 kilos.
Thus there is intense interest in the farm regions and university and veterinary centers, in the latest developments in avian flu. To begin with, Mexican poultry specialists unanimously denounced the media's practice of whipping up fear, without informing the public of what is involved. Recently in Mexico, the price of chicken dropped 20% in one day, as sales fell based on fear scare that eating chicken will cause disease. So, even before the dreaded event of human-to-human transmission of avian flu, the food supply disruption is underway in the Americas, as in Asia.
During a tour of Mexico Nov. 7-16, EIR Economics Editor Marcia Merry Baker met with livestock experts and students at major farm colleges and centers, discussing threats from avian flu, the overall crisis in the economy, and the political prospects for change in Washington, D.C. to make possible introduction of emergency measures.
- MexicoMajor Producer -
As of 2003, world output of chicken meat ranked as follows: United States (14.927 million tons), China (8.898 mil tons), Brazil (7.761 mil tons), Mexico (2.150 mil tons). In 2004, Mexico produced 2.381 million tons. As of 2004, hen-egg production ranked as follows: China (24 million tons), United States (5.252 mil tons), Japan (2.505 mil tons), Russia (1.97 mil tons), Mexico (1.920 mil tons).
For over a decade, Mexico has had experience with a low-pathogenicity avian flu (H5N2) causing sporadic outbreaks among its flocks, and has much veterinary experience in how it spreads. For example, besides the obvious channels of transmission (contaminated vehicles, farmworker clothing, etc.), it has been shown that the sheep breed "Blackbird," one of the breeds owned by Bachocothe largest poultry company in Mexicocan carry the flu in its mucous membranes.
The consensus among many livestock vets favors a mass poultry vaccination campaign, to buy time to make progress on how to control and diminish avian influenza threatsin particular to humans.
Merry Baker participated in a conference at the Antonio Narro Autonomous Agriculture University, at Saltillo in Coahuila, home to a major poultry research and a center of production; and spoke at the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the Nuevo Leon University in Monterrey. In Guanajuato, a leading farm state, she met with vets at a commerical livestock feed operation based in Celaya. In Saltillo, her presentation at the Expo Narro 2005 was titled, "Avian Flu in the World, and How to Combat It."
- Patterns of Concentration -
Several of the poultry specialists spoke of the extreme patterns of concentration imposed under recent years of free trade. Fully 70% of all the brood hens of Mexico have come to be concentrated in a tri-state region of southern Coahuila, and adjacent Durango and Nuevo Leon. These are the hens whose eggs go to produce the laying hens in operations around the rest of the nation, or to produce the chicks that will themselves produce broiler flocks. Therefore bio-security in this region is of intense concern.
These patterns of concentration have come about as major multinationals have moved into Mexico's poultry production over the past 10 years of NAFTA and the WTO. As of 2003, at least 25% of the Mexican poultry industry was foreign controlledPilgrim's Pride and Tyson Foods are among the famous commercial names. The original intent of this domination was in line with making Mexico a source-region for cartel commodity exportsas has been done with frozen vegetables, fresh fruits, and other products. However, when some of the sanitation and other factors were not considered adequate in poultry, cartel intentions shifted.
Merry Baker gave briefings on the extreme degree of concentration worldwide of many basic commodities, such as soybean cultivation, under cartel control of processing and marketing. At the same time, per-capita agriculture production in Mexico has dropped over the past 20 years, for such food necessities as beans and rice. Under the slogan of GATT: "One WorldOne Market," Mexico and other nations were ordered to rely on imports for consumption. The effect? Hunger, malnutrition, and a takedown of the national agriculture sector.
The Guanajuato livestock nutritionists stress that farmers have been driven into the ground, their revenue driven below their costs of production. The Mexican agriculture sector has been devastated.
- Shift in Washington, D.C. -
Therefore, many in Mexico wanted the latest update on prospects for a political shift in Washington, D.C., as represented in "Cheney-Gate," away from the era of radical free-trade "Enronomics" and Halliburton swindles. Many asked: Will the United States really act on livestock health and the food supply? Or, will there be a pretense of stockpiling enough flu vaccine for Americans, and the rest of the world should suffer?
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