Three people, nearly 100 million chickens and 126 dairy herds across 12 states have been infected to date in the newest wave of bird flu to comb the country. Like it or not, bird flu is back, bringing with it the specter of the following global pandemic, supply chain disruptions and food price shocks that may resolve elections.
Bird flu has change into a semi-annual occurrence in America, recurrently exposing the cracks in our fragile food system. As food production has change into more industrialized, consolidated, and precarious, we have now transformed H5N1 from an isolated zoonosis right into a nationwide phenomenon. Only in our misguided system can a sick bird in a single state devastate a dairy farm in one other and lift legitimate fears in regards to the next global pandemic.
Industrial factory farming is at the center of our industrial food system. It herds tons of of 1000’s of animals with almost equivalent genetics together in a really small space, creating ideal breeding grounds for infectious diseases.
This might have been avoided. Federal and state policymakers have traded the resilience of diversified small farms for the profitability of petri dish farming.
Today, 75 percent of laying hens within the United States are raised on just 347 factory farms, with a mean of nearly 850,000 animals per farm. A typical American dairy farm now has greater than 2,000 animals, while the variety of smaller dairy farms has dropped to barely a 3rd of what it was 20 years ago.
Processing plants have also fallen into the hands of a number of large players. Huge corporations now own almost every element of the food chain and transport animals, eggs and dairy products (and the diseases they often carry) through a dense network of processing plants, increasing the likelihood of rapid contamination of your entire country.
In some ways, we have now put all our eggs in a single basket. If that basket falls over, the results might be catastrophic.
At the identical time, big food corporations are notorious for exploiting crises like this to profit on the expense of consumers. A recent report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that through the COVID-19 pandemic, food cartels did just that: They used their enormous market power to take advantage of high prices – and generated revenues that far exceeded total costs. This refuted the businesses' claims that higher grocery shelf prices were obligatory to cover their very own costs.
In late 2023, a federal court jury will rule that Cal-Maine, the nation's largest egg producer, and other major egg producers conspired within the mid-2000s to control egg prices and defraud buyers. These corporations call the shots in Washington and defraud us to cover their lost profits when the system they built fails.
The corporations used the specter of bird flu outbreaks to boost egg prices to a record high of nearly $5 per dozen in January last 12 months. Cal-Maine used high egg prices to extend its profits sixfold, though it didn’t experience a single bird flu outbreak in its flocks until 11 months later.
Today's outbreak may lead to more of those consequences. Public concern about worsening bird flu will likely function fodder for corporations to make further profits.
Biden's Federal Trade Commission must investigate scheming operators like Cal-Maine for price-fixing and anti-competitive practices. And Congress should pass the Farm System Reform Act and the Price Gouging Prevention Act, smart laws that may end factory farming and make price gouging illegal.
The longer we wait to repair our food system, the more corporations will exploit it on the expense of American consumers, family farmers, and our health.
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