The recently completed Pan-American Highway virtually guarantees that foot-and-mouth, already a problem in South America, will make its way up to North America. A Briton with the foot-and-mouth virus on his shoes can board a plane in London and be on a Texas cattle farm in a matter of hours.

Since 1986, when mad cow disease and its human version were detected in Britain, British meat has been shipped around the world. So have British feed products, which can harbor this poorly understood illness that is fatal to humans. Mad cows have already shown up in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, Ireland and Spain. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has declared that all nations should consider themselves at risk. A recent survey by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that one in four American slaughterhouses and feed processing plants fail to comply with steps to prevent mad cow disease.

To understand the problem you have to realize that these are related diseases in terms of the economic environment that allows them to thrive.

The modern animal farm not only allows but paves the way for the outbreak of disease. We cram thousands of genetically uniform animals into unhygienic warehouses, generating a feast for microbes. We recycle animal manure and slaughterhouse waste as feed. We process meat at breakneck speed in the presence of blood, feces and other contagion agents. Long-distance transport of food creates endless opportunities for contamination.

The irony is that this model of food production, designed to put economic gain ahead of good animal health, does not make economic sense in the long term. Mad cow alone has already cost Britain more than $1 billion and sapped $5.6 million from European Union coffers. The price tag for foot-and-mouth is likely to be equally devastating. And these outbreaks are just a glimpse of the full toll on society. The mountains of manure that factory farming generates foul our air and water, disrupting ecosystems and sickening rural communities. Overuse of antibiotics in factory farms comes back to harm us in the form of newly drug-resistant microbes, including salmonella, E. coli and camplyobacter. A recent study found that America's farm animals consume roughly 10 times as much antibiotics as the human population.

Still, industrial animal farming is spreading. It is the fastest growing form of animal production - responsible for nearly half of the world's meat, up from one-third in 1990. It is concentrated in North America and Europe, but industrial feedlots are popping up near urban centers in Brazil, the Philippines, China, India and elsewhere in the developing world where demand for meat and animal products is soaring. There is of course another way to produce meat, one which treats farms as living systems rather than assembly lines. It is no coincidence that mad cow has yet to be reported on organic farms throughout Europe which prohibit feeding of slaughterhouse waste, give animals access to the outdoors and emphasize good animal health in general.

In Sweden, which has been able to prevent an outbreak with good animal husbandry, farmers have gained public trust and recaptured local markets.

In Germany, the food scare has sparked an about-face on farm policy. The chancellor replaced the agriculture minister with an environmentalist and declared that farm policy and practices must mesh with environmental and public health goals. The European Union as a whole is posed for similar systematic reforms that reach beyond quick-fix solutions like animal quarantines and meat irradiation.

Every government needs reforms at the national level, but in the end it is a global issue. Trade is global, disease is global and protecting public health must become global, too.

The writers are researchers at the Worldwatch Institute who focus on effects of food production.

© 2001 the International Herald Tribune

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