What the Health Page #6

This talk about addiction

made me think about

all the drugs animals are fed.

I went to the headquarters

of the Center for Food Safety,

the nation's leading FDA

government watchdog group

to see how concerned we need

to be about drugs in our food.

So, that we know of, there are

at least 450 different drugs

that are administered to animals,

either alone or, in combination.

These drugs are given to animals

for a variety of reasons,

very, very few of which are actually

beneficial to consumer health.

We've got drug companies that

work real hard to make sure

they can sell lots of drugs

to people raising cows,

pigs, and chickens.

The pharmaceutical industry sells 80%

of all the antibiotics that it makes

in the United States

to animal agriculture.

Antibiotic residues

are found in the meat,

other antimicrobials

are found in meat.

There has been ractopamine found in meat,

there has been hormones found in meat,

so right there, you're talking

about four different drugs

that could be in

the same piece of meat.

The pharmaceutical company

is supposed to show

the safety of animal drugs.

They're not really testing to see what the

impacts of these drugs are on humans.

They're really looking

to see what the impacts

of these drugs are on animals.

When we try to get information

on some of the health studies

and the environmental studies

from federal agencies,

we get back page after page

of blacked out information

because the company claimed

confidential business information.

Consumers have no idea what is in

the products that they consume.

So, how sick something makes me and

how bad it pollutes the environment

is a secret for a company.

In the animal agriculture industry,

as in the tobacco industry,

these companies really

have a vested interest

in making sure that

the public doesn't have

information about their effects

and what risks are really

posed to consuming them.

You have this system where animals

are living in their own waste,

they're living next to animals

that are sick or, even dead,

and they're stuck in

cages with these animals,

that bacteria tends to spread, that

the pathogens that are being created

in these filthy conditions are

breeding resistance to antibiotics

and the public are

becoming exposed to those.

We already have people dying.

From salmonella and other

things that you eat,

we have about 3,000 people die

every year in the United States.

That's more than the

number of people that were

killed in 9/11 in the

Twin Towers in New York.

If we had some terrorist

organization killing

3,000 people a year,

we would be all over it.

The antibiotic-resistant

bacteria deaths that we have

on top of that, you get

20,000 people dying a year.

That's seven 9/11s every year.

Can you imagine?

If that many people

were being killed

by some terrorist group

in the United States

every year,

we would find them!

You know,

the World Health Organization

has said we're nearing a

post-antibiotic era in medicine.

You'll be at risk in minor surgeries

o have a fatal infection.

You'll be at risk going to the dentist

if you have a tooth extracted.

Or, it'll be like civil war medicine.

You get an infection in your leg,

and you cut your leg off.

So, you have this

very dangerous situation.

By crowding these animals in,

they become a perfect

engine for generating

a new flu virus that can

come out into the community.

If you lived near

a swine spray field,

not even the CAFO but

the waste disposal field,

you are three times more likely

to have a MRSA infection.

You can't see how that impacts

the average person's life

in Duplin County, North Carolina and

not be a little upset about it.

From an environmental standpoint,

from a community standpoint,

from all other aspects, North Carolina,

we're in a state of emergency.

We've already had bouts of swine flu,

or H1N1, as they prefer to refer to it.

That particular swine flu

incident was

originated on a farm

here in North Carolina.

There's approximately

the same number of hogs

in North Carolina

as there are people.

Between eight to 10 times the amount

of feces is produced by a hog,

an adult hog as compared

to an adult human.

[Kip] 10 million pigs

in North Carolina

produce the waste equal to

a hundred million humans.

This is the equivalent of the

entire US Eastern Seaboard

flushing their toilets

into North Carolina.

But, there is

no waste treatment.

The pigs' waste falls

through slats in the floors

of the sheds they are forced to live in,

it is then pumped into giant waste pits,

which leech into rivers and streams and

is pumped out unfiltered onto fields,

further polluting the environment

and neighboring health.

When you go back and

you look at where these

hog facilities are located, there's

a disproportionate number of them

that are located near

communities of color.

Low-income communities.

It is definitely a human

rights issue.

My sister, she have asthma, you know.

Her brother, he have asthma.

He's three.

And we don't know

what she might have.

I have asthma, I have sinus,

I have sarcoidosis,

that's of the bacteria,

and I have a pacemaker,

which is sick sinus syndrome.

But, you know, mostly

everybody in this neighborhood

got asthma or, either cancer.

My neighbor there died from

cancer probably just last year.

My nephew down the street,

he's got cancer,

he's in terminal cancer,

stage four.

Not a smoker, not a drinker.

And it's not in his lungs,

it's in his lymph nodes.

Now see if you live here

and saw the way they do,

we don't eat no pork.

Well, I don't eat bacon because

I know where it come from.

When they die,

they go into a box,

and they decompose because

they swell from the heat.

A truck come and pick 'em up,

take 'em to the processing

plant in Rose Hill,

ground 'em up into feed,

and feed it back to the hogs.

If I come out this door,

if he's spraying there,

it's gonna come in my face.

It hits you

right in the face.

Smell like something that you

have never smelled before.

Smell worse than a dead body.

That's the family graveyard.

And I have my grandmother out

there, my sisters, my brothers.

When we go to a funeral,

he use the spray.

- During the funeral?

- During the funeral, yes.

During the funeral.

Yeah, they spray.

And when the people come, everybody

be closing their nose up

saying how it stink.

They can want a cookout

on Sunday, he'll spray.

Do you think he does it on

purpose?

I think so.

'Cause he just sprays Sunday.

He always sprays Sunday.

And in most of these area,

hog houses and turkey house,

it's in a black area

or the Hispanic area.

It's either or.

Do you think it's

also a civil rights issue?

Yes, yes, I do.

Yes, I do.

There have been times

in the past that I have

gotten ready on a Sunday and

gotten ready to go to church

and come out

and the smell was so strong

that I had to go back

and regroup because

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