Health Spectator

Most of us think of pigs as being fat; indeed, in our culture the word “pig” is synonymous with overeating and overweight. However, in recent years leanness has become a prized porcine property.

For about fifteen years, the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods, has been marketing lean pork as a healthier alternative. Indeed, the pork industry in general is marketing pork to compete with chicken as a lean white meat. But the methods used to make pork lean should give consumers pause.

In China, feeding pigs chemicals is an ongoing scandal, with nearly 9,000 cases of additive abuse detected this year alone, according to a report from the National People’s Congress Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee picked up by thePigSite.com. More than 80 people in Guangdong province were stricken with stomach aches and diarrhea last February after consuming pig organs contaminated with Clenbuterol, an illegal pig feed additive that not only is harmful to humans, but can be fatal, since it accumulates in organs such as the liver and lungs. Clenbuterol, of course, keeps the animals lean.

In Shanghai in 2006, 336 people were hospitalized after eating pig meat and organs contaminated with the additive.

According to 2007 statistics from the China Meat Association, pork accounts for about 65 per cent of the meat consumed in China. Per capita consumption has doubled in 16 years, starting from 1990. And leaner pork commands a higher price, though pork in general has declined in price since the H1N1 “swine flu” epidemic began. According to the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, the price of pork in July was down 28.3 per cent year over year. Similar price reductions have been reported elsewhere, including the United States. Lynne Hoot, Maryland Pork Producers Council executive director, has said that since swine flu became the popular name for the H1N1 influenza virus, sales of pork to Americans have fallen.

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the six leanest cuts of pork are 16 percent leaner and 27 percent lower in saturated fat than they were 15 years ago.

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While you are waiting to read our exposé on factory farming and swine flu (which should finish final editing in the next 24 hours) you can watch this video from the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.

As we hope to show in greater detail over coming weeks,  the trend in agriculture toward large farms has changed our rural landscape and is affecting not only our national health, but the health of humans globally along with their environment.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 40 percent of people in rural areas lived on farms in 1950. Now USDA statistics reveal that less than 10 percent of the rural population lives on farms and that only 14 percent of the rural workforce is employed in agriculture.

Some rural areas thrive as they become home to commuting professionals, but some just sink deeper into isolation. This helps to explain why in 2003 14.2 percent of the population living in rural America were poor, while the poverty rate in metropolitan areas was 12.1 percent, a disparity that has been constant for several decades.

As for the farming trends themselves, in 1980, approximately 65,000 farmers in the state of Iowa raised hogs, with an average of 200 hogs residing on each farm. By 2002, the number of farms with hogs had fallen to about 10,000, but the average number of hogs per farm had risen to 1,400. Similar trends toward industry concentration have been in effect in North Carolina, which is the second largest pork producer in the U.S. As early as 1993, 13 percent of the producers in North Carolina were responsible for 95 percent of that state’s total swine production.

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We reported more than a year ago on a study that claimed to show a link between consumption of red meat and various cancers, including breast and colorectal cancers. That study came from the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) in collaboration with its parent institution, the World Cancer Research Fund, and was controversial because of its findings.

Now, a new study based on the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study shows no correlations between consumption of meat and postmenopausal breast cancer. (more…)

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