Farming is the heart of every country.  Corporate agriculture - INDUSTRIAL agriculture - is destroying it worldwide.  

Notice that after the vaunted "Green Revolution" and the much ballyhooed "biotech" solutions to food problems:

  the earth is swimming in 6-10 more pesticides than before GMOs,
  fishing stocks are failing because of run-off into oceans,
  prices on commodities are sky-rocketing,
  people are not seeing the great promised yields that were allegedly proposed to solve hunger,

but in fact:

The missing back story to the Pennsylvania primary is milk.

Dairy farmers are critical to Pennsylvania and the state is fighting two milk bans - on labeling of milk, and on raw milk - but no one is talking about Hillary Clinton and her experience with milk.  Or the risk the unlabeled milk poses to women and girls.  Or what it means for a politician - particularly a woman - to be working closely with a corporation which not only created that risk but is going state to state to keep people in the dark about even "where" its product is.

Few people know:

Rob Kall at OpEd News wrote today:

I try to do SOMETHING every day to make a difference. I write, I do all kinds of things related to OpEdNEws. I volunteer with several non-profit organizations. I write to influential people. I call members of congress.

What do you do each day? It's not necessarily easy to find something to do every day. You have to think about it, plan, come up with alternate things to do when there's screaming need to call any legislator. You can write letters to the editor, to corporations that are not behaving well.

Of course, there are books listing things to do. What do you do? ...

Chazelle, a computer scientist at Princeton University, writes:

"There is palpable excitement out there on the left. A pity there is no there there. America has lefties but no left."

Think "Milk."  
Think Monsanto pushing rBGH in cows, with no labeling of the milk.  
Think farmers being sued for saying their milk is rBGH-free.
Think farmers in Pennsylvania facing prison for selling normal raw milk.

Think a 7 fold increased risk of breast cancer from the unlabeled rBGH milk.  http://www.sustdev.org/...

Think when it all began.
Think Clinton administration when Monsanto ran the FDA.
Think Monsanto altering the numbers in the studies.
Think FDA scientists fired telling congress about the fiddle of numbers.
Think Monsanto approving its own product - first GMO ever approved by FDA.
Think Monsanto hiring Burson-Marsteller to clean up the split milk. http://www.corporatewatch.org/...
Think pus in the milk and sick and dead cows and no labeling.

It appears as though a new outbreak of the Nipah virus has emerged in Bangladesh.  I first read about this virus in a recent National Geographic Magazine.  It has been traced to bats, and has a fatality rate of about 75%.  The NG article discussed a case in Australia, where horses were eating underneath a fig tree.  The horses proceeded to get very sick, and then die, and the disease spread to humans.

I’m not surprised by this; the ‘conspiracy claim’ that is. The Bush regime breeds these types of claims -- given the amount of secrecy, hegemonic coercion and pervasive illegality -- they practice all over the world on a day-to-day basis. It’s not only American citizens who don’t believe anything BushCo says or does anymore. The rest of the world has also lost any trust in our government.

This is indeed a bizarre claim and I’m not endorsing its veraciousness. I absolutely detest conspiracy theories, and I’m only shedding light on this now for the following compelling (at least to me) reasons:

I received an email today with a list of very positive views of Hillary Clinton.  I believe those are the main strengths that people see in Hillary and I would like to address them, hoping I am not wronging the person in allowing their views to be seen in this way.  Perhaps they and my response, even, may help sway some voters to Hillary Clinton.  Also, I consider the email to be a response to my Open Letter to Hillary Clinton and feel my response to it should also be public.

The ten most important reasons why I am voting for Hillary

1. It's not the "35 years of experience" that she has frequently mentioned during the presidential campaign. It's what she has done in those 35 years that matters to me. She has a record that shows that she cares deeply about human needs and will work doggedly and tirelessly to change our society and make it better.

The production of industrialized food uses a huge amount of oil for gigantic housing of animals indoors, for chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and running mechanized equipment.  The international transport of food is vast and uses more oil.  And then there are the huge monocropped fields, the clear cutting for them, the industrial production methods for the food "products" themselves ....  The link to climate, if the other issues are not enough reason to act, is immense.

And yet Industrial Agriculture, despite its large and increasing role, has never been included as one of the major contributors to climate change.

I have been watching tv this Saturday night.  I am still fighting the remnants of the influenza, and don't want to go out in the plummeting temperatures.  So I have been watching the History Channel and their program on Alaska.  

They just had a segment on the race to bring the diptheria serum to Nome in January of 1925.  If you don't know the story, which is commemorated by the last 400 miles of the Iditarod, you should definitely go and look at the Wikipedia page and then go to Central Park and pay homage at the statue of Balto, one of the dogs who made that amazing race.

I wrote the open letter to Hillary.  

I was grateful that greenhornet thought enough of it to publish it here and as part of his/her first diary, and felt great that his/her interest in valuing the letter came out of being allied to Native American concerns.

But because I wasn't the one to publish it here (I hadn't signed on in time) and because Dailykos doesn't permit repetition of diaries, it makes my responding to comments ongreenhornet's diary awkward because many responses on my part, in that location, would seem I was taking over.  

So, I'd like to borrow some of  the interest in the letter and carry it over here, so I can generate more discussion in this location, where I can more legitimately comment on the comments.

First, here's the link to greenhornet's diary - http://www.dailykos.com/...
so people can see the letter again and comment on it there and/or here, more easily.

And then I'd like to add another angle to the letter, focusing not just on its content but also on its potential use.

David Nabarro, Senior UN System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, has some bad news, some good news and some more bad news. First (bolded mine):

Bird flu is a problem that will likely be with us for some years to come, according to David Nabarro, senior coordinator for avian and human influenza at the United Nations. [bad] But citing data on the spread of the H5N1 virus from 146 nations, Nabarro emphasized the positive. "The first thing to say is that the situation has changed, between 2004 and 2007, the rate at which new countries are being affected by H5N1 has reduced, we've got a bit of a plateauing [leveling out], the number of human cases, which act as a sentinel, has slightly decreased, and the human deaths have also decreased." [good] He said that broad epidemiological evidence suggests that the H5N1 virus situation is not quite so serious.

Not quite so serious in the sense that we are not seeing more cases and more countries compared to last year. Compare 2007's 77 human cases (so far – pending confirmation of up to 9 people from Pakistan with 2 deaths) with 2006's 115.

Note, however, the bad news. It's still here, still deadly, and still spreading.

The virus, however, is still being actively transmitted in at least six countries, and there are new reports (December 16) of human infection and death in Burma and Pakistan. At the Washington briefing, Nabarro stressed the importance of maintaining focus, funding and political will to keep H5N1 under control.

And John Lange, who leads the U.S. government's avian influenza program, told reporters that the global campaign to stop avian flu goes beyond dealing with individual outbreaks. "What we've really been trying to do, when possible," he explained, "is to build long-term capacity, both on the veterinary side and on the human health side, through increased levels of surveillance, training of veterinarians and epidemiologists, building up laboratories, etcetera."

And Lange observed that international cooperation on bird flu has already had a positive impact on overall public health preparedness. "If there were a new disease that just emerged tomorrow, but it was totally different from H5N1 — maybe something that came out and had the ability for sustained and efficient human-to-human transmission — the best entities able to cope with it in terms of the networks that have been built up would often be those that are now working on the avian and pandemic influenza threats."

Several comments to make about that. Lange is right that a focus on H5N1 and pandemic flu helps public health preparedness in general (and a point that I have been making all along). But the fact that there is now a sense that limited human-to-human transmission has taken place in the recent Pakistan (and maybe China) cases along with the continuing high fatality rates speaks to a continued issue. Some of the drop-off in cases may be to the generous use of 'tamiflu' blankets in exposed individuals and surroundings. That can cut off spread of illness (good) and also perhaps increase false negative testing (bad). Even if that happens on occasion, however, we are not currently seeing an outbreak that suggests the beginning of a pandemic. We are seeing continued (and deadly) outbreaks. In Indonesia:

In 2006, 20% of the confirmed H5N1 cases had no direct contact with poultry.  In 2007, 30% of the confirmed cases have had no direct contact with poultry.  Compared to 2006, Indonesia has had fewer confirmed H5N1 cases this year (40 vs. 55), but the cases have been deadlier -- the CFR has risen from 81.8% in 2006 to 87.5% in 2007 (link).

More worrisome is the Pakistan family cluster we described last week, including one US citizen who tested negative on Long Island (having returned here from Pakistan). Revere at Effect Measure summarizes:

The World Health Organisation (WHO) suspects there has been only limited human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus in Pakistan, but international test results are pending, an official said on Friday.

David Heymann, WHO assistant director-general for health security and environment, said no new suspect human bird flu cases had emerged in Pakistan since Dec. 6, signalling there had been no further spread.

[snip]

"The team feels that this could be an instance of close contact human-to-human transmission in a very circumscribed area and non-sustained, just like happened in Indonesia and Thailand," Heymann told a news briefing in Geneva. (Reuters)

To be clear about continued risk:

Well, originally, the title (respectfully stolen from Effect Measure), referred to a new H5N1 human case in Burma, which joined Indonesia (two separate cases) and China (father-son) in reporting human cases this week. But, the big news is the breaking story in Pakistan.

Pakistan Has Eight Suspected Human Cases of Bird Flu (Update4)

By Jason Gale

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Five members of a family in Pakistan are among eight people who may be the country's first human cases of bird flu, the World Health Organization said. At least one brother died.

Pakistan's national laboratory found the lethal H5N1 avian flu strain caused the infections in three brothers and two cousins from the same family, according to information from a Dec. 15 WHO statement and Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva. Another brother from the U.S., who attended a funeral for one of the victims, and his son tested negative for the virus at a hospital in Nassau County, New York, Hartl said.

Medical teams have been sent to Pakistan to assist local authorities in investigating the cases, in which two people had only mild symptoms, Hartl said. Doctors are monitoring for signs avian flu may be adapting to humans by killing fewer people, fostering its spread.

``It's too early to make any definitive conclusions'' about the outbreak, Hartl said in a Dec. 15 telephone interview. ``We are still in the middle of it.''

New York State health officials were informed Dec. 7 that a man from Nassau County who had returned from Pakistan told his doctor he might have been exposed to avian flu, said Claudia Hutton, director of public affairs for the state department of health in a telephone interview.

Pay attention to the bolded part, above (the NY State Health Department and CDC did). It represents both a familial cluster (raising the possibility of human-to-human transmission), and the speed at which a pandemic can spread worldwide. A more complete list of the outbreak and the large familial cluster it represents (a vet and 4 brothers, with a few cousins thrown in for good measure, spaced over 2 months) can be found at Flu Wiki's Forum. [Here's a summary from Effect Measure]. From Helen Branswell (CP):

Meanwhile, U.S. public health authorities have confirmed they conducted H5N1 testing on a man who had recently visited Pakistan and was complaining of mild respiratory symptoms. The man, who officials will only identify as having a link to the cluster, is said to have been concerned he might have been infected.

"The individual went to his private physician after returning from Pakistan, and discussed this with his physician," said Claire Pospisil, a spokesperson for the New York State department of health.

Pospisil said the doctor contacted the local health department in Nassau County, where the man lives, and they collected samples for testing. The tests came back negative.

David Daigle, a spokesperson for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said the CDC sent its plane to Albany on Dec. 8 to collect specimens for confirmatory testing. Within hours a CDC lab verified the state lab's findings.

"He was negative. There was no doubt about it," Daigle said from Atlanta on Saturday.

The idea that someone could be exposed to H5N1 in Southeast Asia and then fly to NY is completely plausible, and likely just happened. Some heads-up thinking by the local doc [and the patient] got the testing done in a timely manner, but had the testing been positive (and it could easily have been), there'd be quite a few headlines about this issue.

No headlines today? Well, let's use that as a teachable moment to cover two frequent criticisms of flu blogging: hype and fear-mongering.

Now, for all the concerns and accusations of media hype, there really is a paucity of news about H5N1 (Daily Kos excepted) and not a surfeit. Here is a google news search documenting that which used to be in 2005, and that which is now (click for bigger pic). Note that by region, this has overseas interest.

As for fear-mongering, as long as H5N1 remains in the environment, it will remain a threat to humans. And as long as that's so, we will report and write about it.This isn't fear-mongering (a term bandied about by folks who don't like to read about these things, for whatever reason), it's education. It is also prudent awareness of a candidate (H5N1) for a natural disaster (flu pandemic) that's as inevitable as the next "storm of the century", and as difficult to predict (both in timing and intensity). Hopefully, that will lead to some preparation steps (see below). And do note that the NYer tested above informed his doctor of his risk factors and got tested. Without that education (from news and elsewhere), you can't expect that level of public cooperation.

And, of course, thanks to the internets, there's more news to tell.

See Flu Wiki's Sunday wrap-up for the week's documented human and bird cases, courtesy of the wiki volunteers who track cases around the world - helpful to CDC and WHO and other public health officials as they do their work (more than a few have written me that they stop there to get the morning news - this is netroots activism applied to public health!). Not only are there new human cases scattered throughout Asia (including Pakistan, Burma, China and Indonesia, all of whom are less than than transparent about internal news), there are also new bird cases of H5N1 in Germany, Poland, Russia, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia (and the hadj is soon, 1.5 million pilgrims expected).

U.S. labs mishandling deadly germs --Confidential reports submitted to federal regulators describe 'accidents' involving anthrax, bird flu virus, monkeypox and plague-causing bacteria at 44 labs in 24 states.

I commend the work done by Revere at Effect Measure and Daily Kos diarist DemfromCT to promote public awareness of the threat of a flu pandemic posed by the H5N1 strain currently epizootic in birds. This has been a useful handle to sling the issue of public health emergency preparedness generally.  But now I think it's time to move this discussion onto much broader ground.

Frankly, in my view, the more time passes without the H5N1 bird flu evolving into a human transmissible strain, the less likely it is that it will ever happen.  (Whether I'm right about that is irrelevant to my point.) Meanwhile, after a few years of raising the alarm, it's starting to sound to a lot of people like Chicken Little.  As far as I'm concerned, the issue was never one particular strain of one particular virus, and the leadership of the World Health Organization clearly agrees with me.  WHO has just released the World Health Report for 2007, and it focuses on public health emergency preparedness -- but it never once mentions bird flu.