H1N1

Comam menos carne!



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As pandemias que ameaçam em ciclos cada vez mais curtos a humanidade são um subproduto evidente da ganância humana. Na origem da última Gripe Aviária e da explosão do vírus H5N1, tal como a pandemia que agora alastra rapidamente, provocada pelo vírus H1N1, e baptizada com o nome de Gripe Suína, estão as agro-indústrias financiadas pelo capital especulativo mundial. Neste caso, a empresa americana —sediada e associada a uma congénere mexicana, de nome Granjas Carroll—, cujas cotações em bolsa começaram a cair a pique, chama-se Smithfield Foods, Inc.

A concentração e clausura de milhões de porcos, de aves e de bovinos em explorações que nada vêem à frente se não as metas da especulação bolsista, são os principais responsáveis pelas catástrofes biológicas em curso, cujo controlo se vem tornando com o tempo cada vez mais difícil de conseguir. Quando um presidente americano, ou chinês, morrer de uma tempestade de citocina, em reacção a uma pandemia virulenta, então discutiremos seriamente a necessidade de acabar com o negócio concentracionário da carne.

Portugal deveria definir uma política inteiramente avessa às grandes multinacionais agro-pecuárias (1), proibindo por razões ambientais várias fileiras de produção agro-industrial de carne no nosso país. Deveria, pelo contrário, apostar nos métodos tradicionais de criação de animais para alimentação, ainda que com todas as garantias de higiene e cuidados sanitários proporcionados pelas ciências veterinárias. Um país pequeno como Portugal não tem condições para deixar instalar grandes explorações agro-industriais, seja no sector das plantações transgénicas, seja no da produção de carne. Os inconvenientes e perigos oriundos das invasões e contaminações transgénicas no universo vegetal, bem como os perigos catastróficos da contaminação dos lençóis freáticos, rios, ribeiras, lagos e albufeiras pelas fezes e urinas de milhões de suínos, caprinos, bovinos e aves, são uma desvantagem, um custo e sobretudo um perigo social inaceitáveis. O negócio, esse aproveita apenas a uns poucos, que na hora do desastre desaparecem sob uma bateria de agências de comunicação e escritórios de advogados, sempre dispostos a rastejar perante quem lhes paga bem.

É preciso vigiar os aeroportos principais (Portela, Sá Carneiro, Faro, Ponta Delgada e Terceira), assim como os aeroportos secundários (especialmente o de Tires), com prontidão e equipamento de despiste à altura das circunstâncias. O governo que faça o que tem a fazer e depressa, em vez de continuar a inundar o país de propaganda eleitoral mitómana.

Finalmente, no quadro da actual depressão económica mundial, esta pandemia terá impactos catastróficos nos sectores da aviação comercial, turismo, hotelaria e fileiras de produção de carne industrial. Comam menos carne e procurem os vegetais, legumes e frutas locais. Eu não dispenso a Feira de Carcavelos, nem os produtores vinícolas do Grande Estuário — que visito com frequência crescente.


NOTAS

1. Ao contrário do que fomos levados a supor, na União Europeia mais de 40% dos subsídios agrícolas comunitários vão parar aos bolsos de menos de 2% dos beneficiários envolvidos na actividade agrícola. Enquanto uma empresa agrícola de pequena dimensão recebeu em média, no ano de 2005, €8.000, as grandes empresas agrícolas receberam em média €200.000.
   
   Leia-se a propósito este artigo do Spiegel Online:
   

   WHO GETS EU AGRICULTURE SUBSIDIES?
   German Minister Blocking Push for Transparency
   By Hans-Jürgen Schlamp in Brussels
   
   German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner doesn't want to follow an EU directive requiring member states to publish how much individual farmers receive in subsidies. She claims it is a matter of privacy, but some suspect Aigner is aiming to secure votes for her party in the European Parliament.
   
   Each year, the Queen of England receives several hundred thousand euros, as do her son Charles, the Duke of Westminster and the Earl of Plymouth. Despite their frequent criticism of Brussels, the British nobility aren't above taking a share of the European Union's agricultural grant money.
   
   ... One reason to be suspicious can be found in the fact that around 80 percent of German farmers -- the majority of whom are small farmers -- share only a quarter of this agricultural budget. In 2005, that averaged out to about €8,000 per farm. Meanwhile, 40 percent of all the premiums go to large-scale farmers and former agricultural production cooperatives, which make up only about 2 percent of the farmer population. On average, they receive €200,000 each.
   
   But even that looks like small peanuts next to the money pouring into the agricultural industry. Take, for example, companies like Germany's Südzucker AG, its British competitor Tate and Lyle, German energy providers Rheinbraun or RWE, the Dutch multinational Unilever or Switzerland's Nestlé. These companies receive almost half of all EU agricultural subsidies, all because they turn rapeseed into diesel or wine into fuel, add milk to animal feed or ice cream, or make butter to bake pastries or feed airline passengers. — in Spiegel Online, 27-04-2009.

REFERÊNCIAS

• US CORPORATE PIG FARM POSSIBLE FLU EPICENTER
  By Elaine Supkis
  
  April 28, 2009 — It turns out, the epicenter of this H1N1 outbreak might possibly have been connected to a huge agribusiness pig farm in Oaxaca, Mexico. Smithfield denies they are the cause. We won’t know unless there is an investigation. Corporate pig farms are one of the top industrial-animal businesses that irritate neighbors and menace communities. For example, during hurricanes and floods, the pig feces ponds can overflow and the concentrations of nutrients kills plants and spreads diseases. — in Culture of Life News.
  
  
• Mexico says suspected swine flu deaths now at 149
  By Peter Orsi - 28-04-2009
  
  MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico canceled school nationwide Monday and warned the death toll from a swine flu epidemic believed to have killed 149 people would keep rising before it can be contained. Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said 20 of the deaths have been confirmed to be from swine flu and the government was awaiting results on the others.
  
  "We are the most critical moment of the epidemic. The number of cases will keep rising so we have to reinforce preventive measures," Cordova said at a news conference that was briefly shaken by an earthquake centered in southern Mexico.
  
  ... Cordova also suggested an earlier timeline for documented swine flu cases inside Mexico. The first death confirmed by the government involved a woman who succumbed from swine flu on April 13 in southern Oaxaca state. But Cordova said tests now show that a 4-year-old boy contracted the disease at least two weeks earlier neighboring Veracruz state, where a community has been protesting pollution from a large pig farm.
  
  The farm is run by Granjas Carroll de Mexico, a joint venture 50 percent owned by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, Inc. Spokeswoman Keira Ullrich said the company has found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in its swine herd or its employees working at its joint ventures anywhere in Mexico.
  
  But local residents are convinced they were sickened by air and water contamination from pig waste.
  
  
• US HOT STOCKS: GM, Smithfield Foods, Continental Airlines
  
  April 27, 2009 (WSJ) — U.S. stocks were lower Monday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 1% to 7996, the Standard & Poor's 500 lost 1.2% to 855 and the Nasdaq Composite declined 1% to 1677. Among the company's whose shares are actively trading in the session are General Motors Corp. (GM), Smithfield Foods Inc. (SFD) and Continental Airlines Inc. (CAL).
  
  
• 2009 swine flu outbreak
  
  The 2009 swine flu outbreak is the spread of a new strain of H1N1 influenza virus that was first detected by public health agencies in March 2009. Local outbreaks of influenza-like illness were first detected in three areas of Mexico, but the new strain was not clinically ascertained as such until a month later in cases in Texas and California, whereupon its presence was swiftly confirmed in various Mexican states and Mexico City; within days isolated cases elsewhere in Mexico, the U.S., the Northern Hemisphere were also identified. By April 27, the new strain was confirmed in Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom and suspected in many other nations, including New Zealand, with over 2,400 candidate cases, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise their pandemic alert level to 4. A level 4 warning officially means that the WHO considers that there is "sustained human to human transmission"; whereas levels 5 and 6 represent "widespread human infection".
  
  The new strain is an apparent reassortment of several strains of influenza A virus subtype H1N1, including a strain endemic in humans and two strains endemic in pigs, as well as an avian influenza. — in Wikipedia.
  
  
• Cytokine storm
  
  It is believed that cytokine storms were responsible for many of the deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed a disproportionate number of young adults. In this case, a healthy immune system may have been a liability rather than an asset. Preliminary research results from Hong Kong also indicated this as the probable reason for many deaths during the SARS epidemic in 2003.[citation needed] Human deaths from the bird flu H5N1 usually involve cytokine storms as well.[citation needed] Recent reports of high mortality among healthy young adults in the 2009 swine flu outbreak point to cytokine storms as being responsible for these deaths. — in Wikipedia.
  
  
• The ancient Virus World and evolution of cells
  By Eugene V Koonin1, Tatiana G Senkevich and Valerian V Dolja
  
  The existence of several genes that are central to virus replication and structure, are shared by a broad variety of viruses but are missing from cellular genomes (virus hallmark genes) suggests the model of an ancient virus world, a flow of virus-specific genes that went uninterrupted from the precellular stage of life's evolution to this day. This concept is tightly linked to two key conjectures on evolution of cells: existence of a complex, precellular, compartmentalized but extensively mixing and recombining pool of genes, and origin of the eukaryotic cell by archaeo-bacterial fusion. The virus world concept and these models of major transitions in the evolution of cells provide complementary pieces of an emerging coherent picture of life's history. — in Biology Direct.
  
  
• Swine Flu in BBC News
  

OAM 580 28-04-2009 13:40