Smithfield’s Documentation and La Gloria: Examining NAFTA's Impact on the Relationship Between a Transnational Corporation and a Mexican Town.
Another way to assess the significance of the H1N1 outbreak is to frame it in what is called the "epidemiology of inequality", which means to “examine how inequalities across a wide range of scales come together as a form of structural violence that is in turn both embedded in local public health responses and embodied in personal experiences of the disease” (Sparke 727)
The first victim of the swine flu virus was a young boy who in a Mexican village near the pork processing operation of Granjas Carrol, a subsidiary owned by Smithfield Foods located in the Veracruz-Puebla borderlands. While Smithfield Foods the largest hog and pork producer in the world, it is notorious for having a record for environmental violations before coming into Mexico, with examples like the 1997 $12.6 million fine for the violation of the Clean Water Act.
When NAFTA went into effect in 1994, there were many investment incentives for companies like Smithfield Foods to relocate operations there. Thus, Smithfield established the Perote operations with the Mexican agrobusiness AMSA (Agroindustrias Unidas de México S.A. de C.V.). In 1999 it bought the U.S. company Carroll’s Foods for $500 million and began rapid expansion of its operations in Perote.In this "race to the bottom", companies like Smithfield had their operations based in areas (most notably outside the U.S) so that they would deal with lower levels of environmental and health restrictions.
"The waste is for the Mexicans, the meat for the Americans"- Smithfield's Impact on the People of La Gloria
On December 3, 2009, the Swiss Television station TSR aired a documentary called H1N1: Why did it strike the Mexicans first?about the emergence of H1N1 in Mexico and the role played by factory pig farms in the pandemic. By way of interviews with villagers, government officials, doctors and scientists, the documentary establishes a clear link between the health problems faced by the residents of La Gloria and other nearby communities and the operations of the factory farms that have moved to the region, especially since the signing of North American Free Trade agreement in 1994. It also exposes the collusion of the Mexican government with the industry and shows how nothing has been done to protect the affected communities. With shocking on-site footage, the documentary provides clear evidence of the profound damage that the farms have wreaked on these communities, and it puts the role of factory farms squarely back into the centre of the story of the H1N1 pandemic, where it belongs
“On the outskirts of La Gloria, the first thing that strikes you is the odor, which is from the pig farm”Economic mutations are the same as viral mutations
(Octavio Rosas Landa, Professor of Economics at UNAM)
At the four minute mark of the video, you see PETA undercover footage of the poor conditions that the pigs live in the US alone. Now we can only imagine what it would be like in Mexico, where the regulations are even more lax. As the report stated, access to the factories were denied for purposes of “biosecurity”.
“5 million pigs live in a region the size of Switzerland”
Geography point
Professor says a pig generates 8 times the excrement of a human, making the waste in the region around 40 million people- twice the size of the population of Mexico City.
In the video, the villagers shows the bins that are filled with discarded pig. “The gas and ammonia from the pig urine make the air unbreathable.” Part of the liquid evaporates, but the rest go into the soil.
There were documentations of villagers suffering from “severe respiratory infections, often bronchial-pneumonias; pharyngitis, and other problems.
When the epidemic broke out in Mexico, the initial death rate was frightening, which was why it was thought that the pandemic was much more serious than it was.
Mortality rates were NOT higher in Mexico City. Many of the deaths were as a result of unidentifiable respitory illnesses that were not being kept track.
Context: Flu viruses that are constantly reforming being in high density areas made fragile by food and air quality concerns.
The programme focuses on explaining why La Gloria, a Mexican village with 3000 inhabitants, was the birthplace to the global pandemic of H1N1 swine flu and looks at the situation there now. The exact origins, as is well known, are traceable to intensive pig farming operations which are a prominent feature of the area (one is about five miles from La Gloria) and are mostly subsidiaries of Smithfield Foods.
Pig farms such as these, the film reveals, house 90,000-100,000pigs and in an area roughly the size of Switzerland the number of pigs reaches a staggering 5 to 6 million! It was in these industrial units where swine flu originated and it’s no coincidence that the virus has been traced back to pig farms in North Carolina which also happen to be owned by Smithfield. The impacts of these type of farming operations are clear for all to see. Footage shows piles of dead pigs which are dumped in pits and left to rot. It shows the threat of these ‘farms’ to the Mexican workers health and to local residents lives through the contamination and poisoning of the air and water.
Like Pig Business, what is really overwhelming are the huge negative effects on the local people, a consequence of producing the cheapest meat possible for U.S. consumers. After looking at how industrial pig feed is also implicated in the formation and spread of disease, the documentary finally looks at Mexico City which with 22 million people is ideal for the creation of deadly viruses and only a few hours away from major cities around the world.
Many environmental and animal welfare lobby groups have alleged that this has caused massive damage to the environment, intolerable smells, and health risks to farm workers and their families.
Discussion Questions
Works Cited
Kahn,
Carrie, and Marisa Penaloza. "Mexican Pig Farming Town Under The
Microscope."NPR. NPR, 2009. Web. 13 July 2013.
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103698986>.
Additional Resources
Wired Magazine article on the genetic lineage of the H1N1 swine flu can be connected back to 1998 in U.S factory farms: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/swineflufarm/
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