Bird Flu Takes Flight While Meat Scientists Plot World Domination | Rising Anxieties

But, you know, the progress of the movement has been pretty up and down, and my anxieties rise a lot. And I actually think that everybody's anxiety should be at a fever pitch right now because this industry, it's gonna take us all down. It really is. Alright, our first story is from the Detroit Free Press.

This is the only place I've seen this story. I do not understand why it is not getting more attention. CDC... Yes. CDC still exists. CDC, Bird Flu Virus That Infected Michigan Dairy Farmer Capable of Airborne Transmission. Like what? Isn't this the whole thing that we've been fearful was going to happen?

Well, I guess we're not quite there yet. We just keep getting a little bit closer every day. Alright. The strain of bird flu that infected a Michigan dairy farm worker is capable of airborne transmission, amping up concerns about its potential to spark a new pandemic according to a research letter published in June.

Alright, this is a human case that we already knew about. There were two farm workers in, in a dairy in, uh, Michigan last year. And they got very minor symptoms. They did have bird flu, but they had very minor symptoms. One had conjunctivitis and the other had a upper respiratory tract systems, a cough, eye discomfort, you know, I mean, stuff that is not a huge source of concern, but of course the point is, as we should have learned over the past few years, viruses can adapt and viruses can become more serious. And in the past, bird flu has been very serious and killed very large numbers of the people it infected as it is doing with cats now, like an enormous percentage of cats who become infected are dying.

We don't know what the next evolution will be, but there's also been this block, uh, between us and dying. Not just that we don't get that sick from it at the moment, but that it doesn't transmit human to human. We can only get it by contact with the animals. But according to this, they did some experiments.

They infected these poor little ferrets, who apparently are a popular research animal, when it comes to respiratory issues, and they found out that this is airborne, which means of course you don't have to have contact with the animals and, uh, you know, we can all get it. Like, this just seems like such a huge story, but, you know, doesn't seem to be getting a whole lot of attention.

My anxiety just definitely rising about this one. All right. from meatingplace.com. Message in a Bottle. This is an article by Thomas Johnston who writes the Writer's Block Column, and he's talking about, you know, one of the things that makes my anxieties rise more than anything is the enormous success that the meat industry has had in kind of, you know, pushing us back and, and preventing progress and really, really, really promoting the idea that meat is essential for everybody, and they have had enormous progress, but they want more.

He starts off talking about the American Meat Science Association's Reciprocal Meat Conference in Des Moines in 2022. And apparently that's where all this started. And these meat scientists, wow.

You know, when I grew up, I wanna be a meat scientist. They decided to organize a fight against what they saw as an increasing anti-meat activism. Thank you, all of you out there And anti-meat misinformation. Yeah, maybe that would be information, not misinformation. So they've had several conferences since they're working on a third one because they don't think they've made enough progress.

And the whole idea is that they would use scientific evidence as a weapon. I guess their concern now is that science communication is hard, as we all know, 'cause we all try to do it with people, and they don't listen to us when we try to tell them the real science.

But their scientific evidence, and of course they're able to gather all sorts of evidence for the idea that meat is good for you because science is not a perfect endeavor by any means and can be slanted. So they want to do better science communication and they wanna do a better job of marketing what they call the most powerful attributes of animal protein.

It's nutritional essentiality. Essentiality. Yeah, apparently we're all dead. And natural ingredients. And already they have this research. This is gonna depress you, this is gonna make your anxieties rise that three quarters of Americans consider meat and poultry part of a healthy, balanced diet.

Doesn't say necessary part so, you know, hopefully that gives us a little room for still making progress. And so they, apparently these meat scientists who try to get together and identify demographic and sociographic characteristics of their target audience, and do better communication and social media.

And this guy writing this column said that he thinks that the communication should be taking place at the meat case and more specifically on package labels, which is interesting. He thinks that's the most critical, and he lists some people who were doing it, like phrasing, like just pure lamb.

Okay. What did people think was in it, I guess? Yeah, I dunno. I don't know. You know, I'm all for them fucking with the labels because they could potentially be sued for that. So hopefully they will exaggerate, which, you know, they're prone to do. He concludes by saying the meat scientist's movement is admirable given they're walking the walk rather than talking the oft repeated talk.

But that's an uphill battle with entrenched enemies. The easier win is telling consumers in the simplest of terms that meat keeps them alive and well. So, you know, as I said before, we're apparently like either dead or sick. Alright, our next article is from Farm Stand, one of my favorite organizations these days, and this is by Holly Bainbridge, who was a staff attorney there and who I interviewed recently, not about the subject of this article.

And she's writing here about lettuce and why, you know, all of these E coli epidemics seem to be focusing on greens and how it's actually gotten pretty scary to buy greens. I worry about it all the time. I really do. Of course, you know, people have, have noted that I am a bit of a worrier. My mother used to call me my little worry wart.

Apparently this is a lifelong project of mine, How Industrial Animal Ag is Making Lettuce Dangerous. This refers to this recent study outta the FDA, I guess they're still doing some studies in the federal government, confirming that factory farms are contaminating the lettuce at your grocery store.

And, you know, we kind of already know that, but people don't. And I don't even know enough of it, but it's nice to have this like real proof. This was focused in Yuma, Arizona, where there had been a huge E coli outbreak, and the study paid special attention to McElhaney Feedyard, which has 115,000 cows living in it, in I'm sure in utter misery.

And it's very, very close to thousands of acres of leafy greens, you know, the kind that you buy at the grocery store. They found that the actual. E coli can be transferred to the lettuce in two ways. One, dust from the feedlot carried viable toxin-producing E coli, just the dust, but also in the irrigation.

It was found in the irrigation canals adjacent to the livestock operations. And of course, I mean, I assume that lettuce grown in Arizona needs unbelievably large amounts of irrigation. She points out that the FDA study followed on the heels of the largest e coli outbreak in recent history, which was caused by Romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona, or the area.

And, the 2018 outbreak spanned 36 states. So, you know, you could be buying this lettuce at your grocery store, that's for sure. I mean, obviously you know that. And resulted in at least 210 illnesses, 96 hospitalizations, and five deaths. So, you know, from lettuce, from eating lettuce. They're poisoning everything.

And you know, this is e coli, so there's no other source. E coli can only get into your food from animal fecal matter, as it says. Uh, otherwise known as shit. And article also points out that when cattle are fed large portions of grain, as is the practice on factory farms, the number of e coli present in a cow, and the e coli's resistance to the cow's stomach acid rise significantly.

So this is much, much worse because these animals are, are in feedlots. Their bodies are producing abnormal amounts of e coli. I highly recommend visiting this story. It's on farm stand.org.

How Industrial Animal Ag is Making Lettuce Dangerous. Really, this is the kind of information that people really don't know and that can really raise their hackles a little bit about animal ag. Alright, speaking of animal ag, which is all I talk about, um, this is from porkbusiness.com, Artificial Intelligence to Animal Rights Extremism, five key takeaways from the summit.

And they're talking about what was talked about at their recent summit, of the Animal Agriculture Alliance. And here they talk about five takeaways. One, embrace artificial intelligence to make change. All right, who cares? Animal welfare needs to be part of your organizational culture.

Interesting that that comes out number two. We're all here for the same shared goal. At the end of the day, said Nick Wolfenden, Cargill's global Director of Sustainable Animal Welfare. Yes, we are. And in their case, that would be to make money. Like, let's fix it. Who else would be in this business if they weren't in it to make money?

He wants them to embrace animal welfare as part of their organizational culture. And then it says in addition, quote, unquote, healthy tension is important between stakeholders to continue driving change on this issue. What does that mean? It's kinda interesting, isn't it? Are they saying that, uh, it's important that stakeholders compete with each other on animal welfare measures?

They're really interesting. The, the third point is animal health is driving sustainability solutions. Uh, yeah, well, it's driving them off a cliff, but they're worried about the animals and what people think about them. Animal health is obviously a huge, huge issue always in the industry, but right now it's just off the hook.

Create partnerships across the supply chain. This is only interesting because the fact that they have to push to, quote, continue partnerships across the supply chain and across species. It's easy for us to forget that all of these different aspects of the industry are in competition with each other.

They're not necessarily friends. Uh, the chicken people don't necessarily like the pork people and et cetera, et cetera. Alright, but here's number five. This is the one reason I picked out this article. Animal Rights Extremism is a national security concern. The ongoing threat of animal rights extremism is a national security concern, as Karen Meen Bauer, DVM.... 'cause you know, that's what veterinarians study at school, I guess... noted quote, food security is a, is a national security. Food security is a national, well anyway, obviously it is. I mean, you know, we need food. When asked what the top threats to animal agriculture and food security were, I bet you think it's like bird flu or something, responses from security experts included the spread of zoonotic diseases. Oh, all right. So they do agree it's bird flu, which can be exacerbated by on-farm activism. Yeah. Again, they actually have the nerve to blame activists. These like the 12 people in the world who are doing this, going onto these farms using the utmost care.

They're blaming them for these huge, huge bird flu epidemic. They wanna do that so bad. Alright. Also the rise of agro crimes. I don't think that's us. Do you? Um, and animal rights activism and cybersecurity concerns, such as data and intellectual property theft. Well, yeah. They hate us. They still do.

Good. Right? We like to be hated. That means we're, we're making an impact. All right. Finally, I just wanna mention this. This is a story by Kenny Torella on vox.com. This Overlooked Cause of PTSD is Only Going to Get Worse, What Slaughtering Animals All Day Does to Your Mind. Fascinating article, but what's really fascinating about it is it's essentially about a new movie forthcoming. A documentary film about slaughterhouse workers called The Dying Trade. And I am really looking forward to that movie. And, you know, there's a lot of horrible stuff in here, which I won't read to you. Really, I think the, the focus on these workers, a lot of who are featured in this article have, have gone vegan since they quit the industry.

One of them says you became a robot. Really enormous levels of, of alcoholism because of the hideous, uh, stress. They use a new term rather than PTSD, they talk about PITS. It's a category of post-traumatic stress disorder in which the trauma is caused by being the perpetrator of violence.

And of course you would find this in soldiers a lot. Well, but it's, you know, it's kind of narrowing it down rather than just having witnessed violence or having had violence done to you, being the cause of violence can cause really bad psychological harm for people. Surveys of slaughterhouse workers show high rates of anxiety and depression, as I mentioned, a higher level of alcoholism.

Apparently the American Medical Association's Journal of Ethics did an issue on this. I did not realize that. Um, that a couple years ago. So that's really interesting. I'd love that this issue is rising because, you know, people like to hear about people. That's just a fact and one we have to face.

It's hard to tell animal stories, but these stories are tragic. And, and you know, it's very, very hard. They point out it's very hard to gather the information because of course the information is basically controlled by the industry. The workers, a lot of them are undocumented. Obviously, they're not gonna go around talking to people, especially nowadays.

And so it's very hard to gather the information. But they have managed, due to the efforts of a few people, one of whom interestingly wasn't a slaughterhouse worker. He was a slaughterhouse inspector and also suffered from really, really severe PTSD.

I can't wait for this movie. Very excited about this. This could have a real impact.

For women working in the industry, there's also the additional problem of a lot of physical and sexual violence perpetrated against women. You know, uh, this violence doesn't come out of anywhere. Like, you know, it's not like some people are violent, some people aren't.

Situations encourage violence, and this is certainly a situation that encourages a hell of a lot of violence. And that's it for this week's rising anxieties. Please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel and please remember to tune in, next week and, to our other, episodes coming up this week.

We have a, a really, really exciting Henry Report. We're gonna be talking with Melanie Joy about her new book and our interview that will be coming out on Friday is a really, really, special one with Natalie Fulton, who's an amazing influencer, on, on Instagram, really focusing on the animals themselves, and on.

what it is that keeps people from being vegan, please tune into that and thanks for tuning in.