You’ve got to expect it when the disease itself carries your livestock’s name, but the Swine Flu is already hurting hog producers, and giving critics the excuse to gang-up again on the hurting hog industry.
This morning Chicago lean hogs opened limit down and are now floating just a smidgen above that level. The grains and oilseeds are also down, presumably part of the knock-on effect that Swine Flu fears are having, plus speculation that the disease will cut hog production and reduce demand for corn as feed.
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It’s not really going to matter that cooked pork isn’t going to make people sick and it isn’t Canadian or U.S. pigs that are making people sick. Having that “swine” word in the name of the disease makes its taint stick to the industry. Sure, the disease can originate in hogs and jump the species barrier to humans, but that’s nothing new.
What’s alarming is to see how quickly various talking heads are to attribute the present sickness in humans, including deaths, to our modern industry. In a bizarre interview this morning, the host of CBC’s national radio show The Current was keen to attach this outbreak to modern hog production methods.Â
That would make sense, if this particular outbreak occurred out of an intensive herd in Canada or the U.S. But from what I can gather so far, this came out of rather-underdeveloped Mexico, where production methods are rudimentary. And millions of people still have pigs and chickens waddling and strutting around their backyards. Why the rush to pin the blame for this on intensive hog production? Same phenomenon was seen last year with the bird flu. Lots of finger pointing and blamemongering of the intensive chicken industry, but while some large flocks got infected it seemed likely the infection came from the millions of domestic fowl people in southeast Asia keep in their backyards, their front yards, in their houses and on top of their roofs. Those out-in-the-open fowl freely mingle with wild birds and create the ideal environment for interspecies transfer.
One of the weird things about the The Current interview this morning was the musing of an expert about whether it would be good to go back to smaller herds and flocks on lots of little farms, like in the good old days. That may or may not be a good idea, but why raise it when there’s no reason yet to believe that it wasn’t that precise type of herd that caused this present outbreak?Â
Whatever the truth is, and whatever the scientists come out with in the next few days, weeks, months, the ag industry is likely to be bashed around by this once more, and the proof of that is already showing up in the price of hogs and grains this morning in Chicago.
