Michael Mountain, Earth In Transition
August 2016
The Zika virus is now an unfolding pandemic, threatening to lead to the birth of thousands of deformed and neurologically impaired babies; as well as to paralysis, eye problems and other disorders in adults; and to massive healthcare costs over the coming decades. It may also be caused in part by intensive cattle farming.
How Zika affects babies
Could the cattle industry be involved?
“We suspect that something more than Zika virus is causing the high intensity and severity of cases,” Fatima Marinho, director of information and health analysis at Brazil’s Health Ministry, tells the journal Nature.
Dr. Marinho suspects that the cattle-farming industry may indeed be involved, and is looking into the question of whether Bovine Viral Diarrhea has combined with Zika to cause birth defects.
BVD affects cows in countries all over the world, especially in intensive cattle production.
How it’s spreading in the U.S.
How Congress is behaving
Five months ago, the White House asked Congress for $1.9 billion of emergency funding to address the threat of a pandemic. To this day, no funds have been forthcoming. Instead, after months of the usual counterproposals and grandstanding related to special interests (e.g. the “pro-life” lobby and how Planned Parenthood might be involved), the whole Congress simply headed for the hills and their summer vacations.
In an open letter to Congress, pandemic expert and Pulitzer-winning journalist Laurie Garrett writes:
“Partisan bickering about the lives of American babies is unconscionable … This is a pandemic in progress. Reconvene immediately and get the job — your job — done. Failure to do so will mean that every Zika-related birth defect, miscarriage, and paralysis case will be your fault.”
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
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