***AFF***
---1AC---
ADT 1AC
Plan
Plan: the United States Federal Government should substantially curtail domestic
surveillance of agriculture by amending the Animal Disease Traceability Program.
Small Farms
Advantage one is small farms
ADT devastates small farmers and is built on a flawed export model
McGeary, et al 12 (Judiath- Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, Email to the office of management
and budget detailing the objections to ADT- over 60 different organizations signed on in support, Sep.
14, “Re: USDA-APHIS Animal Disease Traceability Final Rule RIN: 0579-AD24”, http://www.rcalfusa.com/wp-content/uploads/animal_id/120913-ltr-to-OMB-on-costs.pdf)
ADT has been criticized by thousands of individuals and organizations because of the undue burdens
that it will impose on producers. The cost of tagging and the extensive recordkeeping requirements
under the rule will impact farmers and ranchers, as well as related businesses such as sale barns and
veterinarians, and will ripple through our rural economies. As detailed in our letter of July 24, the USDA has significantly
underestimated the costs of its rule to both cattle producers and poultry producers. While the agency claims that the costs are under $100
million annually, independent studies indicate that the costs could be three to five times that high for cattle producers alone. Moreover, the
USDA failed to even attempt to estimate the costs to small-scale poultry farmers, a failure that, by itself,
is sufficient cause to reject the rule. Ultimately, the cost will be more than dollars and cents. If producers cannot
afford to meet the new requirements, they will be unable to purchase new animals or market their animals out of state, which could lead to
more of them going out of business. Farmers and ranchers nationwide are already struggling just to keep their cattle alive
through the drought. Over 75 percent of the contiguous U.S. is experiencing drought conditions, and almost half the country is in severe or
worse drought, including the major farming and ranching regions. The
impact on livestock and poultry producers has been
devastating. The forage and feed situation is the worst this country has seen since the 1930s Depression,1 as producers with parched
pastures, rangelands, and crops face expensive hay, grain, and shipping costs. Increased feed costs have led to a reduction in profits per
livestock animal by more than $100 just since June 1.2 One agricultural economist has estimated that 2013 feed prices could triple the 19902004 average.3 Rapidly depleting livestock water is forcing many producers to haul water, which is also expensive and time-consuming.
Families who have been the agricultural backbone of this nation are now at the breaking point. Many
have already sold a large part of their herds, and the slaughter of many breeding age cows will mean
that it will take a decade of normal rainfall to rebuild the cattle population in America. Traceability programs,
such as USDA’s ADT rule, also impose costs on livestock-related businesses, such as sale barns and veterinarians. It was recently reported that
sale barns in New Zealand have added a new surcharge for cattle sales due to the additional equipment, staffing and administrative costs
required for their NAIT (national animal identification and tracing) program.4 It is likely that similar costs under ADT will be passed on to U.S.
farmers and ranchers. Like the sale barns, those producers
who are able to stay in business will have to find a way
to pass on the costs, which will mean higher prices for consumers , who are already facing higher prices at the
grocery store.5 In contrast to the clear costs of the program, the benefits remain vague. The USDA’s Regulatory Impact
Analysis focused almost entirely on the monetary benefits from exports, but this approach is
fundamentally flawed for several reasons. First, the benefits are based on models of varying degrees
of traceability,6 yet tagging is not synonymous with traceability: an animal with an ear tag attached prior
to crossing state lines may become untraceable later through lost tags or poor recordkeeping by state
agencies. Second, as has been shown repeatedly and acknowledged by USDA officials, market access often depends more
on politics than on traceability or other measures. Finally, the financial benefits of exports accrue almost
entirely to the companies who sell the exports. Since the costs of the program will rest almost entirely
on livestock producers and related businesses, it is inappropriate to justify those costs on the basis of
benefits to other entities.
ADT exacerbates the burdens of small farmers with no analysis or compensation
McGeary, et al 12 (Judiath- Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, Email to the office of management
and budget detailing the objections to ADT- over 10 different organizations signed on in support, June 6,
“Re: USDA-APHIS Animal Disease Traceability Final Rule RIN: 0579-AD24”, http://www.rcalfusa.com/wp-content/uploads/animal_id/120606-OMB-Letter-updated.pdf
Tagging cattle is an equipment and labor-intensive task. The reason many small producers don’t tag at
this time is because they have not spent thousands of dollars on equipment such as chutes. Moreover, the
claim that it would cost 18 cents for the labor to tag was based on the assumption that it takes only one minute to tag one
animal.12 That may be true in very large, industrial-scale operations when averaged out over thousands of
animals, but it is often far from true on a smaller scale. Cattle do not always run quickly and quietly through chutes, then
stand still to have their ears tagged. The agency’s estimate also does not take into consideration the administrative oversight needed to assure
accuracy of the procedure. Even for those producers who are large enough to afford the necessary equipment, the
USDA’s cost
estimates ignored several significant factors. USDA estimated the total upper-end cost of complying with animal identification
provisions in the proposed rule at only $4.68 per head.13 Yet USDA had been presented a study, explained below, that estimated that the real
cost of tagging cattle ranged from $17.00 per head to $27.00 per head, excluding the cost of the tag itself.14 Kris Ringwall, Ph.D., Director,
Dickinson Research Center Extension and Livestock Specialist, North Dakota State University (NDSU), conducted the study that involved
the tagging of 14,432 calves during the three-year period 2004-2006. The study concluded that the cost working each calf, tag placement, and
documentation was $7.00 per calf. In addition, Dr. Ringwall’s threeyear project determined that the tagging of calves was costly to producers
because of shrink, which he defined as “weight loss while handling calves.”15 Dr. Rinwall stated in his testimony: When we’ve measured shrink
in the cattle we have worked during the project, we estimate up to $10 to $20 in lost income potential per calf, regardless of the management
activity applied.16 Based on Dr. Ringwall’s findings, the cost of tagging and documenting calves, and the cost of the income lost due to shrink,
ranged from $17.00 per head to $27.00 per head in 2006 or 2007 dollars, excluding the cost of the tag. The cost in 2012 dollars would obviously
be greater. Applying Dr. Ringwall’s findings to the likely number of cattle that cross state lines each year, the cost of the proposed rule to U.S.
cattle producers ranges from $850 million to $1.35 billion, using our estimate of 50 million head of cattle crossing state lines each year. Even if
only the cattle moved to slaughter in 2010 were considered (32.25 million head), the cost to U.S. cattle producers would range from $582
million to $924 million.17 SUMMARY: By understating labor and capital costs, as well as the impact on the animals’ weight (and therefore
value) associated with this regulation, the
USDA significantly underestimated the economic burden on cattle
owners due to the ADT rule. II. USDA improperly dismissed the costs to cattle-related businesses The ADT’s
costly requirements do not stop with the people who own cattle. Both sale barns and veterinarians will be subject to long-term record-keeping
requirements under the proposed rule.18 The agency dismissed the cost to sale barns by stating that they are already required
to keep records on the cattle sold.19 The agency ignored, however, that the current record-keeping requirements do not require separate
documents for each animal or even group of animals, while the proposed rule would do so, vastly expanding the sheer quantity of paper or
data that must be maintained by the sale barns. Even
more disingenuously, the agency anticipated that veterinarians
will charge producers for the costs of keeping such records and then failed to address what those costs
are likely to be.20 Whether the sale barns and vets pass on the costs to the producers or absorb it themselves, someone must pay those
costs. In addition, the agency’s assumption about the costs for veterinary services failed to include the typical charges for having a vet come out
to the farm (or, in the alternative, for hauling animals to the vet), which can range from $30 to over $100 for each visit. The
USDA failed
to address the costs imposed by the ADT rule on a broad segment of support services provided to
livestock producers or to account for how these costs might be absorbed or passed on to farmers and
ranchers, in addition to the direct costs imposed on cattle owners. III. USDA wholly failed to address the
costs to poultry owners Under the proposed rule, poultry moving interstate must be official identified either through group
identification or with a permanent sealed and numbered leg band.21 There are no exceptions to the ID requirement, and
they apply to both the person who sends and the person who received the animals.22 “Group identification” is
defined so that it only applies when a “unit of animals” is managed together as one group “throughout the preharvest chain.”23 This definition
describes the management practices at large, vertically-integrated facilities, but does not apply to the majority of small-scale poultry owners
who frequently commingle poultry of different ages and from different sources. With
respect to poultry, the agency
conducted no analysis of the costs in its Regulatory Impact Analysis. The agency acknowledged in a sentence or
two that there will be an impact on live bird markets, but also admitted that it does not know what those costs will be.24
The agency did not even acknowledge that there will be costs imposed on individuals and farmers who
operate on a small scale, such as those who order day-old chicks from out-of-state or those who take birds to slaughterhouses across
state lines. Instead, the agency made the false assumption that “incremental costs for most … poultry enterprises are expected to be
minimal.”25 Yet the vast
majority of people who own poultry are not part of a vertically integrated operation
and will have to use individual identification for their poultry, creating very significant costs in both time
and out-of-pocket expenses. To understand the impact the rule would have on poultry owners, it’s important to first understand the
complexity of the poultry industry. From commercial pastured broilers and pastured laying hens to backyard flocks to pets, hundreds of
thousands of people own millions of birds under diverse conditions. For example, in USDA’s 2007 survey of agriculture, the agency identified
over 140,000 farms with between 1 and 399 layer hens.26 The survey did not include the many people in both rural and urban settings who
own a few birds for food, show, or as pets, although urban and backyard poultry production is growing at an exponential rate. There are myriad
variations in how people buy poultry outside of vertically-integrated operations. Many people order day-old chicks from hatcheries, commonly
out-of-state. Some buy chicks from local feed and supply stores, who in turn usually have ordered the day-old chicks from hatcheries. Some buy
juvenile or grown birds directly from farms. And many homeowners or smaller operations purchase "spent" laying hens for their personal use
from commercial-scale operations, after they have become uneconomic to commercial egg producers. There are also many variations in how
people manage their poultry. Pastured broiler operations often raise birds in discrete all-in-all-out units that might be amenable to group
identification. In contrast, pastured layer operations will often commingle multiple batches of birds from different locations over a period of
many years, culling individuals in the flock only as needed. Many people have to cross state lines to process their birds because so few
slaughterhouses accept poultry from independent producers. The backyard owners and live bird markets have, if anything, even more
complicated systems.
The costs of raising poultry on a small-scale, from one bird to a few hundred, are very
high, and there are no economies of scale . From buying feed in small quantities to the natural supplements to maintain
health and necessary to certified organic production (such as diatomaceous earth, kelp, oyster and clam shell, and anti-parasitic herbs),
small-scale poultry owners face costs that equal or even exceed their ability to recover those costs
through sales. While pastured poultry products may sell at a seemingly high price, the profit margin is extremely slim, perhaps $1 on an
entire bird or 25 cents on a dozen eggs. Very few of these individuals have employees to care for the birds, and almost none have employees to
handle administrative functions. Thus the paperwork involved in tracking groups, even “dynamic groups” as is done in the vertically integrated
hog operations, would impose significant costs in time and effort. The farmers would have to develop database or paperwork systems capable
of tracking the merging and divided groups, and then enter and maintain all of the information. It’s
far from clear how the tagging
could even be accomplished. Permanently tagging baby chicks or young chickens is simply impossible because of the growth of their
legs. That growth would require holders of poultry to change leg bands a number of times as they grew, and documenting each change in
identification. Even for adults, the cost of the tags and CVI’s could easily be more than the value of the entire animal. At a meeting of the USDA
Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Animal Health, a USDA official stated that the agency had conducted several studies on the issue of tagging
poultry in the context of the live bird market system. Dr.
Hegngi’s testimony indicates that there simply is no
costeffective, reliable way to individually tag poultry on this scale.27 Yet the USDA ignored the work conducted by its
own staff in proposing the new requirements for poultry under the ADT rule. SUMMARY: The USDA completely failed to examine
the economic impacts to the poultry industry, especially on smaller scale operations . If the rule is
implemented as proposed, it will place disproportionate, onerous burdens on both small-scale
farmers and those who seek to raise poultry for their personal use and enjoyment.
ADT is a zombie NAIS
Lewis 12 (Patrice- Backwoods Home Magazine contributor, Issue 137 Sep/Oct 2012, “Animal disease
traceability”, http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/lewis137.html)
In 2009, small farmers and ranchers breathed a sigh of relief. So did people worried about another curtailment of
individual liberty and those whose religious principles oppose microchipping. They thought they had driven a stake through
the heart of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), a USDA-run, state-implemented, program whose goal was to microchip and
track all livestock, right down to the smallest chick on the smallest farm. But three years later NAIS has risen from the grave.
Now the monster goes by a different name — Animal Disease Traceability (ADT) — and claims to be (cough) kinder and
gentler. Don't be fooled. ADT is at least as insidious as NAIS. When I was asked to write this article, Backwoods Home's editors
requested I keep the ranting to a minimum and provide just the facts. Those instructions were merited because frankly it's hard for a livestock
owner to discuss the issue without frothing at the mouth. I have yet to hear from any small farmer, rancher, or homesteader who approved of
NAIS or thought it was a good idea — or even a feasible one. And we shouldn't be much fonder of ADT. I'm going to focus on the current threat,
ADT; but a little background is in order, since the USDA's proposal for ADT
owes so much to the supposedly "dead" NAIS.
was conceived by the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA), a group that
consists primarily of digital chip manufacturers and big corporate meat producers. Piggybacking on the fear
[image omitted] The background The NAIS
caused by the twin threats of terrorism and mad cow disease (BSE), the NIAA thought up a brilliant plan: "Hey Charlie, let's microchip every
single livestock animal in America!" Under
NAIS, every owner of even one livestock animal (cattle, horses, sheep, goats,
have been required to register their name,
address, telephone number, and the Global Positioning System coordinates of the animal's location with the
federal government. Every individual animal in a small operation would have an implanted Radio
Frequency Identification Device (RFID) bearing a 15-digit number. Large producers of pigs or poultry, on the other
poultry, pigs, bison, deer, elk, and even some species of fish raised for aquaculture) would
hand, were going to be allowed the advantage of grouping animals under one number. The
livestock owner would be required
to report activities associated with the chipped animals. Not only major events like birth or death; if your ram jumped your
fence, you would have had to report it to the government. Ride your horse off your property? Each ride would have to be reported. No
exceptions. There was more: heavy fines for non-compliance (up to $1,000 per day under proposed
Texas regulations) and veterinarians would be required to report incidences of non-compliance if they
find animals without ID numbers. The stated goal of NAIS was to safeguard America's meat supply against diseases by tracking
every conceivable livestock animal. This detailed control on potential disease vectors would, in turn, soothe the fears of export markets In
reality, of course, the
implementation was a nightmare, both logistically and in terms of property rights and
privacy. Additionally, it was clear from the start that the major beneficiaries were the large producers, and
that small farmers and ranchers would be unfairly impacted. Thankfully, in June 2009, federal funding for NAIS in its
original form was dropped from the fiscal 2010 spending bill by the House Agricultural Appropriations Subcommittee. House leaders indicated
no future funds would be available unless the USDA one day made NAIS mandatory. Instead, the USDA abandoned NAIS. Some funding was
kept to maintain the program in places where it was already being implemented, such as in Wisconsin, but the rest of the program was
effectively dismantled. Some
(myself included) naïvely assumed that the USDA had backed down from such an
intrusive program because of the opposition. We were unaware that something new and just as insidious was up the
USDA's sleeve.
NAIS hurts small farmers—increases disease and bioterror risk
Zanoni No date (Mary Zanoni-Ph.D. (Cornell), J.D. (Yale), Executive Director of Farm for Life. “Why
You Should Oppose the USDA’s Mandatory Property and Animal Surveillance Program”,
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4Q
FjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.poultrypress.com%2Fhobby%2FWhy%2520You%2520Should%2520Op
pose.doc&ei=LIFfVYjdEsS_sAWt54DwDg&usg=AFQjCNG0rZMUrC5qfIf_nxZQRJuaJcy_w&sig2=y5t1FBJRBcNi-YqxvMD08g&bvm=bv.93990622,d.b2w )
Poultry fanciers and keepers of small flocks are facing a grave threat from a proposed government
intrusion into their innocent choice of pastimes and way of life. For several years, the USDA has been working
with the largest-scale animal industry organizations (for example, the National Pork Producers, Monsanto Company,
and Cargill Meat) to develop a mandatory “National Animal Identification System” (“NAIS”). However, most small scale
livestock producers, people who raise animals for their own food, and people who keep horses or livestock as companion animals do
not know about the USDA’s plans. The NAIS will drive small producers out of the market, will make
people abandon raising animals for their own food, will invade Americans’ personal privacy to a degree
never before tolerated, will violate the religious freedom of Americans whose beliefs make it impossible for them to
comply, and will erase the last vestiges of animal welfare from the production of animal foods. The Problem On
April 25, 2005, the USDA released “Draft Program Standards” (“St.”) and a “Draft Strategic Plan” (“Plan”) concerning the NAIS. If you think the
description below sounds too bizarre to be true, please go to usda.gov/nais, read the Standards and Plan, and check the citations. By January 1,
2008, the NAIS will be mandatory. (Plan, pp. 2, 10, 17.) Every person who owns even one horse, cow, pig, chicken, sheep, pigeon, or virtually
any livestock animal, will be forced to register their home, including owner’s name, address, and telephone number, and keyed to Global
Positioning System coordinates for satellite monitoring, in a giant federal database under a 7-digit “premises ID number.” (St., pp. 3-4, 10-12;
Plan, p. 5.) Every animal will have to be assigned a 15-digit ID number, also to be kept in a giant federal database. The form of ID will most likely
be a tag or microchip containing a Radio Frequency Identification Device, designed to be read from a distance. (Plan, p. 10; St., pp. 6, 12, 20, 2728.) The plan may also include collecting the DNA of every animal and/or a retinal scan of every animal. (Plan, p.13.) The owner will be required
to report: the birthdate of an animal, the application of every animal’s ID tag, every time an animal leaves or enters the property, every time an
animal loses a tag, every time a tag is replaced, the slaughter or death of an animal, or if any animal is missing. Such events must be reported
within 24 hours. (St., pp. 12-13, 17-21.) Third parties, such as veterinarians, will be required to report “sightings” of animals. (St., p. 25.) In other
words, if you call a vet to your property to treat your horse, cow, or any other animal, and the vet finds any animal without the mandatory 15digit computer-readable ID, the vet may be required to report you. If you do not comply, the USDA will exercise “enforcement” against you.
(St., p. 7; Plan, p. 17.) The USDA has not yet specified the nature of “enforcement,” but presumably it will include imposing fines and/or seizing
your animals. There
are no exceptions -- under the USDA plan, you will be forced to register and report even if you raise
of Small Farms –
People with just a few meat animals or 40-cow dairies are already living on the edge financially. The
USDA plan will force many of them to give up farming. Loss of the True Security of Organic and Local
Foods – The NAIS is touted by the USDA and agricorporations as a way to make our food supply “secure”
against diseases or terrorism. However, most people instinctively understand that real food security comes from raising
animals only for your own food or keep horses for draft or for transportation. The Negative Effects Eradication
food yourself or buying
from a local farmer you actually know. The USDA plan will only kill off more local sources
of production and further promote the giant industrial methods which cause many food safety and
disease problems. Extreme Damage to Personal Privacy – Legally, livestock animals are a form of
personal property. It is unprecedented for the United States government to conduct large-scale
computer-aided surveillance of its citizens simply because they own a common type of property. (The only
exceptions are registration of motor vehicles and guns, due to their clear inherent dangers – but they are registered at the state level, not by
the federal government.) The
NAIS would actually subject the owner of a chicken to far more surveillance than
the owner of a gun. Surveillance of small-scale livestock owners is like the government subjecting people to surveillance for owning a
couch, a TV, a lawnmower. What about non-livestock animals? Will the government next want to register all cats, dogs, and parakeets, and
demand the global positioning coordinates of their owners’ houses and apartments? Insult
to Animal Welfare – The NAIS is the
ultimate objectification of higher, sensitive living creatures, treating individual animals as if they were
cans of peas with a bar code. Many people who raise their own animals or buy from small, local producers do so because they are
very troubled by industrial-scale production of chickens, cattle, and pigs. These people will be forced either to sacrifice their
personal privacy to government surveillance, or to stop raising their own food by humane standards.
Burden on Religious Freedom – Many adherents of plain (and other) faiths raise their own food animals and use
animals in farming and transportation because their beliefs require them to live this way. Such people
obviously cannot comply with the USDA’s computerized, technology-dependent system. The NAIS will
force these people to violate their religious beliefs.
Disease spread causes extinction
David Quammen 12, award-winning science writer, long-time columnist for Outside magazine for
fifteen years, with work in National Geographic, Harper's, Rolling Stone, the New York Times Book
Review and other periodicals, 9/29, “Could the next big animal-to-human disease wipe us out?,” The
Guardian, pg. 29, Lexis
Infectious disease is all around us
under ordinary conditions it's
natural
But
conditions aren't always ordinary
Aberrations occur
zoonosis
It's a
word
destined for heavy use in the 21st century
. It's one of the basic processes that ecologists study, along with predation and competition. Predators are big beasts that eat their prey from outside. Pathogens (disease-causing agents, such as
viruses) are small beasts that eat their prey from within. Although infectious disease can seem grisly and dreadful,
,
every bit as
as what lions do to wildebeests and zebras.
. Just as predators have their accustomed prey, so do pathogens. And just as a lion might occasionally depart from its normal behaviour - to kill a cow instead of a wildebeest, or a human instead of
a zebra - so a pathogen can shift to a new target.
. When a pathogen leaps from an animal into a person, and succeeds in establishing itself as an infectious presence, sometimes causing illness or death, the result is a
. It's a mildly technical term, zoonosis, unfamiliar to most people, but it helps clarify the biological complexities behind the ominous headlines about swine flu, bird flu, Sars, emerging diseases in general, and the threat of a global pandemic.
of the future,
. Ebola and Marburg are zoonoses. So is bubonic plague. So was the so-called Spanish influenza of 1918-1919, which had its source in a wild
aquatic bird and emerged to kill as many as 50 million people. All of the human influenzas are zoonoses. As are monkeypox, bovine tuberculosis, Lyme disease, West Nile fever, rabies and a strange new affliction called Nipah encephalitis, which has killed pigs and pig farmers in Malaysia.
Each of these zoonoses reflects the action of
a pathogen can "spillover crossing into people from other animals
that
",
. Aids is a disease of zoonotic origin caused by a virus
that, having reached humans through a few accidental events in western and central Africa, now passes human-to-human. This form of interspecies leap is not rare; about 60% of all human infectious diseases currently known either cross routinely or have recently crossed between other
animals and us. Some of those - notably rabies - are familiar, widespread and still horrendously lethal, killing humans by the thousands despite centuries of efforts at coping with their effects. Others are new and inexplicably sporadic, claiming a few victims or a few hundred, and then
disappearing for years.
Zoonotic pathogens can hide
. The least conspicuous strategy is
to lurk within
what's called
a reservoir host
: a living organism that carries the pathogen while
suffering little or no illness. When a disease seems to disappear between outbreaks, it's often still lingering nearby, within some reservoir host. A rodent? A bird? A butterfly? A bat? To reside undetected is probably easiest wherever biological diversity is high and the ecosystem is
relatively undisturbed. The converse is also true: ecological disturbance causes diseases to emerge. Shake a tree and things fall out. Michelle Barnes is an energetic, late 40s-ish woman, an avid rock climber and cyclist. Her auburn hair, she told me cheerily, came from a bottle. It
approximates the original colour, but the original is gone. In 2008, her hair started falling out; the rest went grey "pretty much overnight". This was among the lesser effects of a mystery illness that had nearly killed her during January that year, just after she'd returned from Uganda. Her
story paralleled the one Jaap Taal had told me about Astrid, with several key differences - the main one being that Michelle Barnes was still alive. Michelle and her husband, Rick Taylor, had wanted to see mountain gorillas, too. Their guide had taken them through Maramagambo Forest
and into Python Cave. They, too, had to clamber across those slippery boulders. As a rock climber, Barnes said, she tends to be very conscious of where she places her hands. No, she didn't touch any guano. No, she was not bumped by a bat. By late afternoon they were back, watching the
sunset. It was Christmas evening 2007. They arrived home on New Year's Day. On 4 January, Barnes woke up feeling as if someone had driven a needle into her skull. She was achy all over, feverish. "And then, as the day went on, I started developing a rash across my stomach." The rash
spread. "Over the next 48 hours, I just went down really fast." By the time Barnes turned up at a hospital in suburban Denver, she was dehy drated; her white blood count was imperceptible; her kidneys and liver had begun shutting down. An infectious disease specialist, Dr Norman K
Fujita, arranged for her to be tested for a range of infections that might be contracted in Africa. All came back negative, including the test for Marburg. Gradually her body regained strength and her organs began to recover. After 12 days, she left hospital, still weak and anaemic, still
undiagnosed. In March she saw Fujita on a follow-up visit and he had her serum tested again for Marburg. Again, negative. Three more months passed, and Barnes, now grey-haired, lacking her old energy, suffering abdominal pain, unable to focus, got an email from a journalist she and
Taylor had met on the Uganda trip, who had just seen a news article. In the Netherlands, a woman had died of Marburg after a Ugandan holiday during which she had visited a cave full of bats. Barnes spent the next 24 hours Googling every article on the case she could find. Early the
following Monday morning, she was back at Dr Fujita's door. He agreed to test her a third time for Marburg. This time a lab technician crosschecked the third sample, and then the first sample. The new results went to Fujita, who called Barnes: "You're now an honorary infectious disease
doctor. You've self-diagnosed, and the Marburg test came back positive." The Marburg virus had reappeared in Uganda in 2007. It was a small outbreak, affecting four miners, one of whom died, working at a site called Kitaka Cave. But Joosten's death, and Barnes's diagnosis, implied a
change in the potential scope of the situation. That local Ugandans were dying of Marburg was a severe concern - sufficient to bring a response team of scientists in haste. But if tourists, too, were involved, tripping in and out of some python-infested Marburg repository, unprotected, and
then boarding their return flights to other continents, the place was not just a peril for Ugandan miners and their families. It was also an international threat. The first team of scientists had collected about 800 bats from Kitaka Cave for dissecting and sampling, and marked and released
more than 1,000, using beaded collars coded with a number. That team, including scientist Brian Amman, had found live Marburg virus in five bats. Entering Python Cave after Joosten's death, another team of scientists, again including Amman, came across one of the beaded collars they
had placed on captured bats three months earlier and 30 miles away. "It confirmed my suspicions that these bats are moving," Amman said - and moving not only through the forest but from one roosting site to another. Travel of individual bats between far-flung roosts implied
circumstances whereby Marburg virus might ultimately be transmitted all across Africa, from one bat encampment to another. It voided the comforting assumption that this virus is strictly localised. And it highlighted the complementary question: why don't outbreaks of Marburg virus
disease happen more often? Marburg is only one instance to which that question applies. Why not more Ebola? Why not more Sars? In the case of
Sars
, the scenario
could have been very much worse
. Apart from the
2003 outbreak and the aftershock cases in early 2004, it hasn't recurred. . . so far. Eight thousand cases are relatively few for such an explosive infection; 774 people died, not 7 million. Several factors contributed to limiting the scope and impact of the outbreak, of which humanity's good
luck was only one. Another was the speed and excellence of the laboratory diagnostics - finding the virus and identifying it. Still another was the brisk efficiency with which cases were isolated, contacts were traced and quarantine measures were instituted, first in southern China, then in
If the virus had arrived in a different
burned through a much larger segment of humanity
Hong Kong, Singapore, Hanoi and Toronto.
sort of big
city
- more loosely governed, full of poor people, lacking first-rate medical institutions -
it might have
. One further factor, possibly the most crucial, was inherent in the way Sars affects the human body: symptoms tend to appear in a person
before, rather than after, that person becomes highly infectious. That allowed many Sars cases to be recognised, hospitalised and placed in isolation before they hit their peak of infectivity. With influenza and many other diseases, the order is reversed. That probably helped account for
1918 influenza
occurred
before globalisation
When the Next Big One comes it will conform to the
1918 influenza high infectivity
preceding notable symptoms
it move through
airports like an angel of death
not every virus goes
the scale of worldwide misery and death during the
-1919
. And that infamous global pandemic
including viruses.
,
. That will help
in the era
likely
same perverse pattern as the
cities and
around the world often address. The most recent big one is Aids, of which the eventual total bigness cannot even be predicted - about 30 million deaths, 34 million living people infected, and with no end in sight. Fortunately,
. Everything nowadays moves around the planet faster,
:
. The Next Big One is a subject that disease scientists
airborne
If HIV could you and I might already be dead If rabies could would be the most
horrific pathogen on the planet The influenzas are well adapted for airborne transmission
from one host to another.
-1
,
.
the
virus
, it
.
, which is why a new strain can circle the
world within days. The Sars virus travels this route, too, or anyway by the respiratory droplets of sneezes and coughs - hanging in the air of a hotel corridor, moving through the cabin of an aeroplane - and that capacity, combined with its case fatality rate of almost 10%, is what made it so
scary in 2003 to the people who understood it best.
intermittent and mysterious
disease
Human-to-human transmission is the crux That
(such as Ebola)
.
from a global pandemic
capacity
is what separates a
bizarre, awful,
localised
,
. Have you noticed the persistent, low-level buzz about avian influenza, the strain known as H5N1, among disease experts over the past 15 years?
That's because avian flu worries them deeply, though it hasn't caused many human fatalities. Swine flu comes and goes periodically in the human population (as it came and went during 2009), sometimes causing a bad pandemic and sometimes (as in 2009) not so bad as expected; but
avian flu resides in a different category of menacing possibility. It worries the flu scientists because they know that H5N1 influenza is extremely virulent in people, with a high lethality. As yet, there have been a relatively low number of cases, and it is poorly transmissible, so far, from
human to human. It'll kill you if you catch it, very likely, but you're unlikely to catch it except by butchering an infected chicken. But if H5N1 mutates or reassembles itself in just the right way, if it adapts for human-to-human transmission, it could become the biggest and fastest killer
disease since 1918. It got to Egypt in 2006 and has been especially problematic for that country. As of August 2011, there were 151 confirmed cas es, of which 52 were fatal. That represents more than a quarter of all the world's known human cases of bird flu since H5N1 e merged in 1997.
But here's a critical fact: those unfortunate Egyptian patients all seem to have acquired the virus directly from birds. This indicates that the virus hasn't yet found an efficient way to pass from one person to another. Two aspects of the situation are dangerous, according to biologist Robert
Webster. The first is that Egypt, given its recent political upheavals, may be unable to staunch an outbreak of transmissible avian flu, if one occurs. His second concern is shared by influenza researchers and public health officials around the globe: with all that mutating, with all that
contact between people and their infected birds, the virus could hit upon a genetic configuration making it highly transmissible among people. "
As long as H5N1 is out there in the world
," Webster told me,
there is the possibility of disaster
other primate has ever weighed upon the planet to anything like the degree we do
We are an outbreak And here's the thing about outbreaks they end
"
. . . There is the theoretical possibility that it can acquire the ability to transmit human-to-human." He paused. "And then God help us." We're unique in the history of mammals.
No
. In ecological terms, we are almost paradoxical: large-
bodied and long-lived but grotesquely abundant.
.
:
. In some cases they end after many years, in others
they end rather soon. In some cases they end gradually, in others they end with a crash. In certain cases, they end and recur and end again. Populations of tent caterpillars, for example, seem to rise steeply and fall sharply on a cycle of anywhere from five to 11 years. The crash endings
are dramatic, and for a long while they seemed mysterious. What could account for such sudden and recurrent collapses? One possible factor is infectious disease, and viruses in particular.
Bioterrorism risks extinction
Mhyrvold 13 – Nathan Myhrvold founded Intellectual Ventures after retiring as chief strategist and chief technology officer of
Microsoft Corporation. During his 14 years at Microsoft, Nathan founded Microsoft Research and numerous technology groups. He has always
been an avid inventor. To date, he has been awarded hundreds of patents and has hundreds of patents pending. Before joining Microsoft,
Nathan was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge University, and he worked
with Professor Stephen Hawking. He earned a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics and a master's degree in mathematical
economics from Princeton University, and he also has a master's degree in geophysics and space physics and a bachelor's degree in
mathematics from UCLA. (“Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action”, July 2013, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290382)
Even more so than with nuclear weapons, the
cost and technical difficulty of producing biological arms has dropped
precipitously in recent decades with the boom in industrial molecular biology. A small team of people with the necessary technical training and some cheap
equipment can create weapons far more terrible than any nuclear bomb. Indeed, even a single individual might do so. Taken together, these trends utterly
undermine the lethality-versus-cost curve that existed throughout all of human history. Access to extremely lethal agents—even to those
that may exterminate the human race—will be available to nearly anybody. Access to mass death has been democratized; it has spread from a small elite of
superpower leaders to nearly anybody with modest resources. Even the leader of a ragtag, stateless group hiding in a cave—or in a Pakistani suburb—can
potentially have “the button.” Turning Life Against the Living The first and simplest kinds of biological weapons are those that are not contagious and thus do not
lead to epidemics. These have been developed for use in military conflicts for most of the 20th century. Because the pathogens used are not contagious, they are
considered controllable: that is, they have at least some of the command-and-control aspects of a conventional weapon. Typically, these pathogens have been
“weaponized,” meaning bred or refined for deployment by using artillery shells, aerial bombs, or missiles much like conventional explosive warheads. They can be
highly deadly. Anthrax is the most famous example. In several early- 20th-century outbreaks, it killed nearly 90% of those infected by inhaling bacterial spores into
their lungs. Anthrax was used in the series of mail attacks in the United States in the fall of 2001. Even with advanced antibiotic treatment, 40% of those who
contracted inhalational anthrax died during the 2001 attacks.1 That crime is believed to have been the work of a lone bioweapons scientist who sought to publicize
the threat of a biological attack and boost funding for his work on anthrax vaccines. This conclusion is consistent with the fact that virtually no effort was made to
disperse the bacterium— indeed, the letters carrying the spores thoughtfully included text warning of anthrax exposure and recommending that the recipient seek
immediate treatment. Despite this intentional effort to limit rather than spread the infection, a surprising amount of trouble was caused when the fine anthrax
powder leaked from envelopes and contaminated other mail. Before this episode, nobody would have guessed that letters mailed in New Jersey to addresses in
Manhattan and Washington, D.C., could kill someone in Connecticut, but they did. And no one would have predicted that a domestic bioterrorist launching multiple
attacks, including one against the U.S. Congress, would elude the FBI for years. But that is what happened. What if such an attack were made not by some vigilante
trying to alert the world to the dangers of bioweapons but instead by a real sociopath? Theodore J. Kaczynski, better known as the “Unabomber,” may have been
such a person. He was brilliant enough to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan yet was mentally disturbed enough to be a one-man terrorist
cell: His mail bombs claimed victims over nearly two decades. Kaczynski certainly had enough brains to use sophisticated methods, but because he opposed
advanced technology, he made untraceable low-tech bombs that killed only three people. A future Kaczynski with training in microbiology and genetics, and an
eagerness to use the destructive power of that science, could be a threat to the entire human race. Indeed, the world has already experienced some true acts of
biological terror. Aum Shinrikyo produced botulinum toxin and anthrax and reportedly released them in Tokyo on four separate occasions. A variety of technical and
organizational difficulties frustrated these attacks, which did not cause any casualties and went unrecognized at the time for what they were, until the later Sarin
attack clued in the authorities.2 Had the group been a bit more competent, things could have turned out far worse. One 2003 study found that an airborne release
of one kilogram of an anthrax-spore-containing aerosol in a city the size of New York would result in 1.5 million infections and 123,000 to 660,000 fatalities,
depending on the effectiveness of the public health response.3 A 1993 U.S. government analysis determined that 100 kilograms of weaponized anthrax, if sprayed
from an airplane upwind of Washington, D.C., would kill between 130,000 and three million people.4 Because anthrax spores remain viable in the environment for
more than 30 years,1 portions of a city blanketed by an anthrax cloud might have to be abandoned for years while extensive cleaning was done. Producing enough
anthrax to kill 100,000 Americans is far easier to do—and far harder to detect—than is constructing a nuclear bomb of comparable lethality. Anthrax, moreover, is
rather benign as biological weapons go. The pathogen is reasonably well understood, having been studied in one form or another in biowarfare circles for more
than 50 years. Natural strains of the bacterium are partially treatable with long courses of common antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin if the medication is taken
sufficiently quickly, and vaccination soon after exposure seems to reduce mortality further.5 But bioengineered anthrax that is resistant to both antibiotics and
vaccines is known to have been produced in both Soviet and American bioweapons laboratories. In 1997, a group of Russian scientists even openly published the
recipe for one of these superlethal strains in a scientific journal.6 In addition, numerous other agents are similar to anthrax in that they are highly lethal but not
contagious. The lack of contagion means that an attacker must administer the pathogen to the people he wishes to infect. In a military context, this quality is
generally seen as a good thing because the resulting disease can be contained in a specific area. Thus, the weapon can be directed at a well-defined target, and with
luck, little collateral damage will result. Unfortunately, many
biological agents are communicable and so can spread beyond the people
initially infected to affect the entire population. Infectious pathogens are inherently hard to control because there is usually no reliable way
to stop an epidemic once it starts. This property makes such biological agents difficult to use as conventional weapons. A nation that starts an epidemic may see it
spread to the wrong country—or even to its own people. Indeed, one cannot target a small, well-defined population with a contagious pathogen; by its nature, such
a pathogen may infect the entire human race. Despite this rather severe drawback, both the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as Imperial Japan,
investigated and produced contagious bioweapons. The logic was that their use in a military conflict would be limited to last-ditch, “scorched earth” campaigns,
perhaps with a vaccine available only to one side. Smallpox is the most famous example. It is highly contagious and spreads through casual contact. Smallpox was
eradicated in the wild in 1977, but it still exists in both U.S. and Russian laboratories, according to official statements.7 Unofficial holdings are harder to track, but a
number of countries, including North Korea, are believed to possess covert smallpox cultures. Biological weapons were strictly regulated by international treaty in
1972. The United States and the Soviet Union agreed not to develop such weapons and to destroy existing stocks. The United States stopped its bioweapons work,
but the Russians cheated and kept a huge program going into the 1990s, thereby producing thousands of tons of weaponized anthrax, smallpox, and far more exotic
biological weapons based on genetically engineered viruses. No one can be certain how far either the germs or the knowledge has spread since the collapse of the
Soviet Union. Experts estimate that a large-scale, coordinated smallpox attack on the United States might kill 55,000 to 110,000 people, assuming that sufficient
vaccine is available to contain the epidemic and that the vaccine works.8, 9 The death toll may be far higher if the smallpox strain has been engineered to be
vaccine-resistant or to have enhanced virulence. Moreover, a smallpox attack on the United States could easily broaden into a global pandemic, despite the U.S.
stockpile of at least 300 million doses of vaccine. All it would take is for one infected person to leave the country and travel elsewhere. If New York City were
attacked with smallpox, infections would most likely appear on every continent, except perhaps Antarctica, within two weeks. Once these beachheads were
established, the epidemic would spread almost without check because the vaccine in world stockpiles and the infrastructure to distribute it would be insufficient.
That is particularly true in the developing world, which is ill equipped to handle their current disease burden to say nothing of a return of smallpox. Even if “only”
50,000 people were killed in the United States, a million or more would probably die worldwide before the disease could be contained, and containment would
probably require many years of effort. As horrible as this would be, such a pandemic is by no means the worst attack one can imagine, for several reasons. First,
most of the classic bioweapons are based on 1960s and 1970s technology because the 1972 treaty halted bioweapons development efforts in the United States and
most other Western countries. Second, the Russians, although solidly committed to biological weapons long after the treaty deadline, were never on the cutting
edge of biological research. Third and most important, the
science and technology of molecular biology have made enormous
advances, utterly transforming the field in the last few decades. High school biology students routinely perform molecular-biology manipulations that would
have been impossible even for the best superpower-funded program back in the heyday of biological-weapons research. The biowarfare methods of the 1960s and
1970s are now as antiquated as the lumbering mainframe computers of that era. Tomorrow’s terrorists will have vastly more deadly bugs to choose from. Consider
this sobering development: in
2001, Australian researchers working on mousepox, a nonlethal virus that infects mice (as chickenpox
does in humans), accidentally discovered that a simple genetic modification transformed the virus.10, 11 Instead of
producing mild symptoms, the new virus killed 60% of even those mice already immune to the naturally occurring strains of mousepox. The new virus, moreover,
was unaffected by any existing vaccine or antiviral drug. A team of researchers at Saint Louis University led by Mark Buller picked up on that work and, by late 2003,
found a way to improve on it: Buller’s variation on mousepox was 100% lethal, although his team of investigators also devised combination vaccine and antiviral
therapies that were partially effective in protecting animals from the engineered strain.12, 13 Another saving grace is that the genetically altered virus is no longer
contagious. Of course, it is quite possible that future tinkering with the virus will change that property, too. Strong reasons exist to believe that the genetic
modifications Buller made to mousepox would work for other poxviruses and possibly for other classes of viruses as well. Might the same techniques allow
chickenpox or another poxvirus that infects humans to be turned into a 100% lethal bioweapon, perhaps one that is resistant to any known antiviral therapy? I’ve
asked this question of experts many times, and no one has yet replied that such a manipulation couldn’t be done. This case is just one example. Many
more
are pouring out of scientific journals and conferences every year. Just last year, the journal Nature published a controversial
study done at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in which virologists enumerated the changes one would need to
make to a highly lethal strain of bird flu to make it easily transmitted from one mammal to another.14 Biotechnology is advancing so rapidly that it
is hard to keep track of all the new potential threats. Nor is it clear that anyone is even trying. In addition to lethality and drug resistance, many other parameters
can be played with, given that the infectious power of an epidemic depends on many properties, including the length of the latency period during which a person is
contagious but asymptomatic. Delaying the onset of serious symptoms allows each new case to spread to more people and thus makes the virus harder to stop. This
dynamic is perhaps best illustrated by HIV, which is very difficult to transmit compared with smallpox and many other viruses. Intimate contact is needed, and even
then, the infection rate is low. The balancing factor is that HIV can take years to progress to AIDS, which can then take many more years to kill the victim. What
makes HIV so dangerous is that infected people have lots of opportunities to infect others. This property has allowed HIV to claim more than 30 million lives so far,
and approximately 34 million people are now living with this virus and facing a highly uncertain future.15 A virus genetically engineered to infect its host quickly, to
generate symptoms slowly—say, only after weeks or months—and to spread easily through the air or by casual contact would be vastly more devastating than HIV .
It could silently penetrate the population to unleash its deadly effects suddenly. This type of epidemic would be almost impossible to combat because most of the
infections would occur before the epidemic became obvious. A technologically sophisticated terrorist group could develop such a virus and kill a large part of
humanity with it. Indeed, terrorists may not have to develop it themselves: some scientist may do so first and publish the details. Given the rate at which biologists
are making discoveries about viruses and the immune system, at some point in the near future, someone
may create artificial pathogens
that could drive the human race to extinction . Indeed, a detailed species-elimination plan of this nature was openly proposed in a
scientific journal. The ostensible purpose of that particular research was to suggest a way to extirpate the malaria mosquito, but similar techniques could be
directed toward humans.16 When I’ve talked to molecular biologists about this method, they are quick to point out that it is slow and easily detectable and could be
fought with biotech remedies. If you challenge them to come up with improvements to the suggested attack plan, however, they have plenty of ideas. Modern
biotechnology will soon be capable, if it is not already, of bringing about the demise of the human race— or at least of killing a sufficient number of people to end
high-tech civilization and set humanity back 1,000 years or more. That terrorist groups could achieve this level of technological sophistication may seem far-fetched,
but keep in mind that it takes only a handful of individuals to accomplish these tasks. Never has lethal power of this potency been accessible to
so few, so easily. Even more dramatically than nuclear proliferation, modern biological science has frighteningly undermined the correlation between the lethality of
a weapon and its cost, a fundamentally stabilizing mechanism throughout history. Access to extremely lethal agents—lethal enough to exterminate Homo sapiens—
will be available to anybody with a solid background in biology, terrorists included. The 9/11 attacks involved at least four pilots, each of whom had sufficient
education to enroll in flight schools and complete several years of training. Bin Laden had a degree in civil engineering. Mohammed Atta attended a German
university, where he earned a master’s degree in urban planning—not a field he likely chose for its relevance to terrorism. A
future set of terrorists
could just as easily be students of molecular biology who enter their studies innocently enough but later put their skills to homicidal use.
Hundreds of universities in Europe and Asia have curricula sufficient to train people in the skills necessary to make a sophisticated biological weapon, and hundreds
more in the United States accept students from all over the world. Thus it seems likely that sometime in the near future a small band of terrorists, or even a single
misanthropic individual, will overcome our best defenses and do something truly terrible, such as fashion a bioweapon that could kill millions or even billions of
people. Indeed,
the creation of such weapons within the next 20 years seems to be a virtual
certainty . The repercussions of their use are hard to estimate. One approach is to look at how the scale of destruction they may cause compares with that
of other calamities that the human race has faced.
Turns are epistemologically flawed- they reflect a coercive mentality the only harms
farmers
Smith Thomas No Date (Heather Smith Thomas- author of 20 books and thousands of articles on
animal health care, “The NAIS Controversy
Part I”, http://www.dairygoatjournal.com/84-6/heather_smith_thomas/ )
Government intrusion into our lives/Control of animal agriculture The greatest advantage America has
over most other countries is our personal freedom and a free market system. Government involvement
in free enterprise has always been detrimental, except when needed to ensure consumer and workplace safety and fair
competition. But the NAIS (which seems to have been created to protect international markets and give unfair advantage to certain
players in industry) is being forced on us in the guise of disease prevention. We were doing a good job of that already. The NAIS is
not fair, nor necessary. It is un-American to impose a mandatory ID system on everyone who owns a
farm animal. In essence this creates a tax on animal agriculture or requires us to "buy a license" to own an
animal, since ultimately it would be illegal to not comply. Centralized control of agriculture is dictatorship, not free
enterprise. The NAIS intrudes on our free enterprise system, our property rights and personal property,
and in some instances our religious freedom. There are some religious groups who use animals for their
own use and livelihood who do not believe in using modern technology like microchips or computers. And
who will enforce the NAIS? Not everyone will comply, even if it becomes mandatory. Can the USDA make us do it? A
growing number of people are taking an in-depth look at the NAIS plan, questioning not only whether it will work or be cost effective, but
whether it is legal or constitutional (and whether the USDA even considered cheaper and more practical alternatives). The
NAIS may
violate the Fourth Amendment because USDA wants surveillance of every premises where even a single
animal of any livestock species is kept, and wants RFID for every animal. There are millions of people who own a few
chickens or goats, or raise a lamb or steer for themselves (or as a 4-H project) or have a horse. In these instances the premises the
USDA wants to target with GPA surveillance are homes. NAIS would be intrusive to people who have done nothing more
than own an animal, which is their right, under U.S. law. Forcing registration and having information about your private
property (premises and animals) in a huge database is also a violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments. Property rights are protected by our Constitution. No one can be deprived of property
without due process of law. But the NAIS says USDA can remove untagged animals from a premises,
with no mention of compensation for the owner. Government does not have the right, according to the
Constitution, to come onto your property to inspect or tag your animal. Some states are starting to drag their feet on
the NAIS plan, even a few of the states that were initially pushing ahead with premises registration. Representative Frank Nicely (Republican,
Tennessee) introduced a bill that would let Tennessee opt out of the RFID cattle tracking system; he said the NAIS is not a good idea except for
the people who are manufacturing radio tags. With the rising opposition to NAIS, the USDA may not be as confident now about making all
states implement the program, even with funding bribes, and has decided to address the NAIS in the 2007 Farm Bill. The bureaucrats and big
business interests who designed the NAIS are now lobbying Congress to get the program implemented. A groundswell of opposition is also
bombarding Congress, and this has become a hot political issue in recent months. USDA Secretary Johanns claims that USDA has the authority
to make the system mandatory, even without Congress passing legislation to that effect, so it will be interesting to see how this drama unfolds.
Using Any Means to Gain the Goal In the push to convince animal owners to use the ISO frequency chips or ear tags, facts
have been
ignored or twisted to influence people that this is a better system (in spite of its documented flaws and shortcomings)
than our American chip frequency system, and we are also told it is the accepted universal, international system, when it is not. Even
scarier than these distortions, half-truths and "spins," however, are efforts to coerce us into thinking
that the only way to protect ourselves from foreign disease or bio-terrorism is to embrace the NAIS
system in its entirety (100 percent cooperation). On August 29, after an article appeared on the nonais.org website about the state of
Vermont halting premises registration, a comment was left on the website from someone pretending to be a terrorist. The comment read:
"Thanks, Vermont, for opening an avenue for those that wish to use animal disease as a bio-eco-terrorism tool. We would have tried to start
along the SW border but that’s now just too obvious. Thanks! We’ll take the NE corner and work our way in that way. – ABET" When a
comment is made, however, the website software records the IP address of the commenter. The owner of the nonaois.org site was able to
track it down, with some help from OrgAbuse personnel. The comment came from the USDA Office of Operations, Office of the Chief
Information Officer. This raises several questions. Is someone in
the USDA threatening terrorism in order to justify the
NAIS? Is some disgruntled USDA employee unhappy that many farmers are not accepting the NAIS, after all the hard work on it? Would some
stoop so low as to actually pose as terrorists (or worse, commit an act of terrorism that might be blamed on another country) to scare
Americans into thinking we really need the NAIS? This is no idle concern, considering that in today’s world the control of food production has
become political. As stated by Leo M. Schwartz (Chairman of the Virginia Land Rights Coalition) in his July 7, 2006 article "National Animal ID,"
the NAIS has nothing to do with national security, disease control or food safety. "It is land, livestock and
people regulation, an industrial, inventory-tracking and control scheme, and a ‘public- private
partnership’ racket designed to license agriculture and bring the food supply system under the boot of
centralized power. Regulatory burdens and costs, corporate monopolies, taxation and fees, liability,
religious, property and privacy rights are serious concerns. But NAIS runs much deeper . Centralized
control of agriculture is a mark of despotism ," said Schwartz. He quoted Zimbabwe’s Marxist dictator, Robert Mugabe (who
"nationalized" 95 percent of that country’s rural land and plunged Africa’s leading food producing nation into chaos) who said, "Absolute power
is when a man [person] is starving and you are the only one able to give him [them] food." Food is power. Food is a weapon.
Schwartz raised questions about the UK’s outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001 in which some six million healthy sheep, cows, pigs and
goats (including rare breeds) were slaughtered without justification, completely devastating British agriculture. Farmers were unable to defend
their property, and the forced quarantine held them prisoner on their own land. British veterinarian Bob Michell later wrote, recalling the mass
culling, "In
the name of veterinary disease control we were about to embark on the greatest unnecessary
slaughter of healthy animals in the history of our profession…and the unnecessary suffering of those on whose farms they lived, or
whose livelihoods evaporated in the smoking pyres." The cost of all this, according to Schwartz was more than 12 billion pounds, 60 farmer
suicides "and a nation further conditioned to accept the ‘security and safety’ of militarized police-state control."
Exports
Advantage 2 is exports
Lack of traceability greatly hurts U.S. meat exports
Schroeder and Tonsor 11(Ted C. Schroeder - Professor Agricultural Economics and Director Center
for Risk Management Education and Research at Kansas State University, and Glynn T. Tonsor Associate Professor Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University, “Cattle Identification and
Traceability: Implications for United States Beef Exports”,
http://www.agmanager.info/livestock/marketing/AnimalID/KSU_FactSheet_SchroederTonsor_9-1211.pdf)
Meat importing countries are adopting animal traceability systems similar to those of major exporters. Animal disease control and food safety
assurances highlight the main goals of these systems. Consumers
in European and Asian markets are increasingly
requiring animal traceability, access to animal movement records, and producer identification as a
means for developing trust in food safety assurances. Consequently, these countries will likely continue
to add traceability requirements on their international suppliers. Access to these markets will
increasingly depend upon demonstrated individual animal traceability. Furthermore, assuring animal
age, either through traceability or dentition, is essential for access to many major importers especially
for countries such as the United States
and Canada who
have OIE controlled BSE status. Information was
collected regarding the status of market access requirements to illustrate the U.S. competitive position relative to major competing exporters
and important importing countries. Table 2 summarizes trade requirements for selected major export and import countries. The United States,
Canada, and Brazil share the same BSE status of controlled risk in OIE (World Animal Health Organization) classification whereas Australia, New
Zealand, and Argentina enjoy negligible risk. Several important observations arise from the review of trade status summarized in table 2. The
United States faces an array of trade restrictions related to animal age and export verification requirements to many key export market
destinations. Most of these restrictions surfaced following the BSE discovery in the United States cattle herd in late 2003. In contrast, Australia
and New Zealand face no restrictions on beef exports to important US export customers. Brazil and Argentina face some restrictions because of
FMD, but also have no restrictions related to animal age verification. [Table omitted] [table omitted] Requirements for US beef exports to major
importers are complicated by varying market access requirements. For example, maximum age requirements are common but vary, countryspecific export verification programs are often required, different requirements and definitions exist across countries relative to specified risk
material (SRM), some programs require tracing to farm of origin, and EU requires non-hormone treated cattle (NHTC) verification. The myriad
of age and source verification requirements for U.S. beef export market access has been mostly met by the use of voluntary USDA age and
source certification and related export verification programs. However, only about 10% of fed cattle slaughtered in the United States currently
are being produced under a USDA age and source verified program. The varied market access requirements make sorting beef products a
challenge that would be easier met with animal identification and traceability. Certainly, Australia and New Zealand have comparative
advantages of having less cumbersome export market access requirements. Relative to the other major exporters in table 2, the U.S. animal
identification system is the least developed. Therefore, export market access restrictions based on ID and traceability requirements will place
the U.S. beef industry at a competitive disadvantage. Additionally, if the United States suffers an animal disease outbreak, the
lack of
traceability could again contribute to a long-term disruption in U.S. beef exports, at tremendous
costs to the United States industry.
Fear of disease could stop US exports
CME 15 (Chicago Mercantile Exchange & Chicago Board of Trade, “CME: US Meat Exports Facing
Significant Headwinds”, http://www.thepoultrysite.com/poultrynews/34391/cme-us-meat-exportsfacing-significant-headwinds/ ,18 February 2015)
US - US meat exports are facing significant headwinds at this time, be this due to the sharp increase in the value of the
US dollar, lower prices for competing meats in other countries and the slowdown strike in West Coast ports, write Steve Meyer and Len Steiner.
And then there is always the risk of markets closing their doors due to disease outbreaks. Canada announced
yesterday that it had found another case of BSE, which prompted South Korea to close its doors. But the impact from that will be minimal.
South Korea does not purchase much beef from Canada and it is unlikely that the Canadian case will affect current US exports to the South
Korean market. But the case does highlight that should
we find a case of BSE in the US, it could in the short term cause
some markets to close their doors. It is a risk. Then there is the spread of avian flu in the US West Coast.
There have been cases of the highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza in Washington State and
California. Some countries have imposed limited export bans but China is the only major importer to
impose a complete ban on US poultry shipments. But it remains to be seen how other countries respond now that a
second case of bird flu is found in a California, especially since this time it was found in a commercial operation. Most US poultry production is
located in the South and Southeastern part of the US and there have been no indications of cases of bird flu there. Still, there
is a risk
that if the disease spreads in other states, we could see a more forceful reaction from our trading
partners . Mexico in the past has blocked US poultry shipments due to bird flu concerns and Mexico today is a much more important
market than it was 10 years ago. Back then (2005), Mexico accounted for about 10 per cent of US chicken exports. Last year, Mexico
represented 21 per cent of all US chicken exports and, at 154 million pounds (CWE), it also represented about 2.7 per cent of all US chicken
production. This is a very important market for US chicken and it bears watching how they respond to the new cases of avian flu cropping up.
Poultry supplies are expanding globally and a strong US dollar also is working against our exports. Some
countries may find this an
opportune time to ban US shipments and use the outbreak of avian influenza as an excuse . And we need
all the exports we can get considering the supply of chicken coming to market today and expectations for higher production in the spring and
summer.
Argentina proves - lack of exports reduces meat production
Queck 13 (Paul Queck- freelance ag writer based in Indianapolis, “Argentina Provides A Lesson In How
to Ruin a Beef Industry” , http://beefmagazine.com/beef-exports/argentina-provides-lesson-how-ruinbeef-industry, Sep 26, 2013)
That was seven years ago. USDA reports that Argentina exported only 164,000 mt of beef in 2012, slipping to 11th
place as a global beef exporter. Per-capita beef consumption has declined to 121 lbs./year. And during those same
seven years, U.S. beef exports have increased from 472,668 mt to more than 1.13 million mt. Argentina’s beef export decline is a welcome
development to American cattlemen. After all, the less beef the Argentinians offer for the world market, the less competition for our U.S. beef
exports. But
Argentina’s problems also serve as a warning for just how quickly bad government policies
can cripple [undermine] an industry. In March 2006, Argentina’s government – in an effort to lower the rising price of
beef to its people – banned beef exports for 180 days. It followed that up by imposing a 15% export tax on fresh beef – a tax that’s still
in force. The export tax choked off exports and domestic beef prices dropped. The government assumed
ranchers and farmers would continue to raise cheap beef. But instead, they cut their herds and
converted their pastures to soybean production – which was more profitable than raising
cattle for the artificially depressed beef market. Soybean acres increased in Argentina from 37.6 million
acres in 2005 to more than 48 million acres in 2012 – mostly gaining those new acres from pasture and other crops, such as
corn. The national beef herd dropped from 54.26 million head in 2009 to 49.59 million head in 2012. In
addition to raising fewer cattle, farmers and ranchers also freed up land for crops by finishing cattle in feedlots instead of producing the grassfed beef for which the country had been famous.
U.S. meat exports displace local farmers-creating huge poverty -Mexico proves
Bacon 12 (David Bacon-Award-winning photojournalist, author, and immigrant rights activist ,“How US
Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration” ,http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policiesfueled-mexicos-great-migration , January 4, 2012 )
Roberto Ortega tried to make a living slaughtering pigs in Veracruz, Mexico. “In my town, Las Choapas, after I killed a pig, I would cut it up to
sell the meat,” he recalls. But in the late 1990s, after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened up Mexican markets to
massive pork imports from US companies like Smithfield Foods, Ortega and other small-scale butchers in Mexico were devastated by the drop
in prices. “Whatever I could do to make money, I did,” Ortega explains. “But I could never make enough for us to survive.” In 1999 he came to
the United States, where he again slaughtered pigs for a living. This time, though, he did it as a worker in the world’s largest pork
slaughterhouse, in Tar Heel, North Carolina. His new employer? Smithfield—the same company whose imports
helped to drive
small butchers like him out of business in Mexico. David Ceja, another immigrant from Veracruz who wound up in Tar Heel,
recalls, “Sometimes the price of a pig was enough to buy what we needed, but then it wasn’t. Farm prices were always going down. We
couldn’t pay for electricity, so we’d just use candles. Everyone was hurting almost all the time.” Ceja remembers that his family had ten cows,
as well as pigs and chickens, when he was growing up. Even then, he still had to work, and they sometimes went hungry. “But we could give
milk to people who came asking for it. There were people even worse off than us,” he recalls. In 1999, when Ceja was 18, he left his family’s
farm in Martinez de la Torre, in northern Veracruz. His parents sold four cows and two hectares of land, and came up with enough money to get
him to the border. There he found a coyote who took him across for $1,200. “I didn’t really want to leave, but I felt I had to,” he remembers. “I
was afraid, but our need was so great.” He arrived in Texas, still owing for the passage. “I couldn’t find work for three months. I was desperate,”
he says. He feared the consequences if he couldn’t pay, and took whatever work he could find until he finally reached North Carolina. There
friends helped him get a real job at Smithfield’s Tar Heel packinghouse. “The boys I played with as a kid are all in the US,” he says. “I’d see many
of them working in the plant.” North Carolina became the number-one US destination for Veracruz’s displaced farmers. Many got jobs at
Smithfield, and some, like Ortega and Ceja, helped lead the sixteen-year fight that finally brought in a union there. But they paid a high price.
Asserting their rights also made them the targets of harsh immigration enforcement and a growing wave of hostility toward Mexicans in the
American South. The
experience of Veracruz migrants reveals a close connection between US investment and
trade deals in Mexico and the displacement and migration of its people. For nearly two decades,
Smithfield has used NAFTA and the forces it unleashed to become the world’s largest packer and processor of hogs
and pork. But the conditions in Veracruz that helped Smithfield make high profits plunged
thousands of rural residents into poverty . Tens of thousands left Mexico, many eventually helping
Smithfield’s bottom line once again by working for low wages on its US meatpacking lines. “The free trade
agreement was the cause of our problems,” Ceja says. Smithfield Goes to Mexico—and Migrants Come Here In 1993 Carroll Foods, a
giant hog-raising corporation, partnered with a Mexican agribusiness enterprise to set up a huge pig farm known as
Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) in Veracruz’s Perote Valley. Smithfield, which had a longtime partnership with Carroll Foods,
bought the company out in 1999. [image omitted] By 2008 the Perote operation was sending close to a million pigs to slaughter
every year—85 percent to Mexico City and the rest to surrounding Mexican states. Because of its location in the mountains above the city of
Veracruz, Mexico’s largest port, the operation could easily receive imported corn for feed, which makes up two-thirds of the cost of raising
hogs. NAFTA
lifted the barriers on Smithfield’s ability to import feed. This gave it an enormous
advantage over Mexican producers , as US corn, heavily subsidized by US farm bills, was much cheaper. “After NAFTA,” says
Timothy Wise, of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, US corn “was priced 19 percent below the cost of
production.” But Smithfield didn’t just import feed into Mexico. NAFTA allowed it to import pork as well. According to Alejandro
Ramírez, general director of the Confederation of Mexican Pork Producers, Mexico imported 30,000 tons of pork in 1995, the year after NAFTA
took effect. By 2010 pork imports, almost all from the United States, had grown more than twenty-five times, to 811,000 tons. As
a result,
pork prices received by Mexican producers dropped 56 percent. US pork exports are dominated by the
largest companies. Wise estimates that Smithfield’s share of this export market is significantly greater than its 27 percent share of US
production. Imported pork had a dramatic effect on Mexican jobs. “We lost 4,000 pig farms,” Ramírez estimates,
based on reports received by the confederation from its members. “On Mexican farms, each 100 animals produce five jobs, so we lost 20,000
farm jobs directly from imports. Counting the five indirect jobs dependent on each direct job,
we lost over 120,000 jobs in
total.” “That produces migration to the US or to Mexican cities,” Ramírez charges. Corn imports also rose, from 2 million
to 10.3 million tons from 1992 to 2008. “Small Mexican farmers got hit with a double whammy,” Wise explains. “On the one hand, competitors
were importing pork. On the other, they were producing cheaper hogs.” Smithfield was
both producer and importer. Wise
estimates that this one company supplies 25 percent of all the pork sold in Mexico. The increases in pork and
corn imports were among many economic changes brought about by NAFTA and concurrent neoliberal reforms to the Mexican economy, such
as ending land reform. Companies
like Smithfield benefited from these changes, but poverty increased also,
especially in the countryside. In a 2005 study for the Mexican government, the World Bank found that the extreme rural poverty
rate of 35 percent in 1992–94, before NAFTA, jumped to 55 percent in 1996–98, after NAFTA took effect—the years when Ortega and Ceja left
Mexico. This could be explained, the report said, “mainly by the 1995 economic crisis, the sluggish performance of agriculture, stagnant rural
wages, and falling real agricultural prices.” By
2010, according to the Monterrey Institute of Technology, 53 million
Mexicans were living in poverty— half the country’s population. About 20 percent live in
extreme poverty , almost all in rural areas. The growth of poverty, in turn, fueled migration. In 1990,
4.5 million Mexican-born people lived in the United States. A decade later, that population had more
than doubled to 9.75 million, and in 2008 it peaked at 12.67 million. About 5.7 million were able to get
some kind of visa; another 7 million couldn’t but came nevertheless. As an agricultural state, Veracruz suffered from
Mexico’s abandonment of two important policies, which also helped fuel migration. First, neoliberal reforms did away with Tabamex, a national
marketing program for small tobacco farmers. A similar program for coffee growers ended just as world coffee prices plunged to record lows.
Second, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the country’s corrupt president, pushed through changes to Article 27 of the Constitution in 1992,
dismantling land reform and allowing the sale of ejidos, or common lands, as private property. Waves
of tobacco and coffee
farmers sold their land because they could no longer make a living on it. Many became migrants. But
allowing the sale of ejidos to foreigners made it possible for Carroll Foods to buy land for its swine sheds. Displaced farmers then went to work
in those sheds at low wages. Simultaneous changes in the United States also accelerated migration. The Immigration Reform and Control Act,
passed by Congress in 1986, expanded the existing H2-A visa program, creating the current H2-A program, which allows US agricultural
employers to bring in workers from Mexico and other countries, giving them temporary visas tied to employment contracts. Growers in North
Carolina became large users of the program, especially through the North Carolina Growers Association. Landless tobacco farmers from
Veracruz became migrant tobacco workers in the Carolinas. “Many Veracruzanos came because we were offered work in the tobacco fields,
where we had experience,” remembers Miguel Huerta. “Then people who’d been contracted just stayed, because they didn’t have anything in
Mexico to go back to. After the tobacco harvest, workers spread out to other industries.” From Huerta’s perspective, “ these
companies are very powerful . They can go to Mexico and bring as many employees as they want
and replace them when they want.” Poverty, though, was the real recruiter. It created, as Ceja says, the
need. “We all had to leave Veracruz because of it,” he emphasizes. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t do something so hard.”
U.S. meat exports’ displacement of local farmers has devastating environmental
consequences
Bacon 12 (David Bacon-Award-winning photojournalist, author, and immigrant rights activist ,“How US
Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration” ,http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policiesfueled-mexicos-great-migration , January 4, 2012 )
Hog raising is a dirty business—and the environmental damage it creates has provoked rising opposition
to Smithfield’s operations within US borders. In Virginia in 1997, federal judge Rebecca Smith imposed the largest federal
pollution fine to that date—
$12.6 million—on the company for dumping pig excrement into the Pagan River, which runs into Chesapeake Bay.
That year the state of North Carolina went further, passing a moratorium on the creation of any new
open-air hog waste lagoons and a cap on production at its Tar Heel plant. In 2000 then–State Attorney General Mike
Easley forced Smithfield to fund research by North Carolina State University to develop treatment methods for hog waste that are more
effective than open lagoons. Despite
North Carolina’s well-known hostility to regulating business, in 2007 Easley (by
the moratorium permanent. In the face of public outcry over stench and flies, even the
anti-regulation industry association, the North Carolina Pork Council, supported it. [image omitted] In
Mexico’s Perote Valley, however—a high, arid, volcano-rimmed basin straddling the states of Veracruz
and Puebla—Smithfield could operate unburdened by the environmental restrictions that increasingly
hampered its expansion in the United States. Mexico has environmental standards, and NAFTA supposedly has a
procedure for requiring their enforcement, but no complaint was ever filed against GCM or Smithfield under
NAFTA’s environmental side agreement. Carolina Ramirez, who heads the women’s department of the Veracruz Human Rights
Commission, concluded bitterly that “the company can do here what it can’t do at home.” For local farmers like
Fausto Limon, the hog operation was devastating. On some warm nights his children would wake up and vomit from the smell.
then governor) made
He’d put his wife, two sons and daughter into his beat-up pickup, and they’d drive away from his farm until they could breathe without getting
sick. Then he’d park, and they’d sleep in the truck for the rest of the night. Limon and his family all had painful kidney ailments for three years.
He says they kept taking medicine until finally a doctor told them to stop drinking water from the farm’s well. Last May they began hauling in
bottled water. Once they stopped drinking from the well, the infections stopped. Less than half a mile from his house is one of the many pig
farms built by Smithfield’s Mexican hog-raising subsidiary, GCM. “Before the pig farms came, they said they would bring jobs,” Limon
remembers. “But then we found out the reality. Yes, there were jobs, but they also brought a lot of contamination.”
David Torres, a Perote native who spent eight years in the operation’s maternity section, estimates that GCM has eighty complexes, each with
as many as 20,000 hogs. The sheds look clean and modern. “When I went to work there, I could see the company was completely mechanized,”
he says. The Mexican News online business journal explains that “production cost is very low because of the high ratio of pigs to workers…. The
preparation of food and feeding of the pigs is completely automated, along with temperature control and the elimination of excrement.”
Workers aren’t employed directly by Granjas Carroll, however, according to Torres. “Since
we work for a contractor, we’re not
entitled to profit-sharing or company benefits,” he says. “Granjas Carroll made millions of dollars in profits, but never
distributed a part of them to the workers,” as required under Mexico’s federal labor law. Torres was paid 1,250 pesos ($90) every fifteen days;
he says the company picked him up at 6 every morning and returned him home at 5:30 each evening, often six days a week. In
back of
each complex is a large oxidation pond for the hogs’ urine and excrement. A recent drive through the valley
revealed that only one of several dozen was covered. “Granjas Carroll doesn’t use concrete or membranes under their ponds,”
Torres charges, “so the water table is getting contaminated. People here get their water from wells, which are
surrounded by pig farms and oxidation ponds.” Ruben Lopez, a land commissioner in Chichicuautla, a valley town surrounded
by hog farms, also says there is no membrane beneath the pools. In response to an article published in August in Imagen de Veracruz, a
Veracruz newspaper, GCM public relations director Tito Tablada Cortés declared, “Granjas Carroll does not pollute.” And Smithfield
spokeswoman Amy Richards says, “Our environmental treatment systems in Mexico strictly comply with local and federal regulations…. Mexico
encourages, and requires, anaerobic digesters and evaporation ponds.” Yet
despite the 1,200 jobs the pig farms created in a
valley where employment is scarce, Limon estimates that a third of the young people have left. “They don’t
see a future, and every year it’s harder to live here,” he says. In 2004 a coalition of local farmers called Pueblos Unidos (United Towns) started
collecting signatures for a petition to protest the expansion of the swine sheds. According to teacher Veronica Hernandez, students told her
that going to school on the bus was like riding in a toilet. “Some of them fainted or got headaches,” she charges. When expansion plans moved
forward nonetheless, on April 26, 2005, hundreds of people blocked the main highway. That November a construction crew about to build
another shed and oxidation pond was met by 1,000 angry farmers. Police had to rescue the crew. Finally, in 2007 GCM’s Tablada Cortés signed
an agreement with local towns blocking any new expansion. That year, however, the company filed criminal complaints against Hernandez and
thirteen other leaders, charging them with “defaming” the company. Although the charges were eventually dropped, the farmers were
intimidated and the protest movement diminished. [image omitted] Then,
in early 2009, the first confirmed case of swine
flu, the AH1N1 virus, was found in a 5-year-old boy, Édgar Hernández from La Gloria. Pickup trucks from the local
health department began spraying pesticide in the streets to kill the omnipresent flies. Nevertheless, the
virus spread to Mexico City. By May, forty-five people in Mexico had died. Schools closed, and public events were canceled.
Environmental degradation risks extinction- the risk is linear err aff
Coyne 7 (Jerry and Hopi Hoekstra , *professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the
University of Chicago AND Associate Professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary
Biology at Harvard University, New Republic, “The Greatest Dying,” 9/24,
http://www.truthout.org/article/jerry-coyne-and-hopi-e-hoekstra-the-greatest-dying)
But it isn't just the destruction of the rainforests that should trouble us. Healthy ecosystems the world over provide hidden services
like waste disposal, nutrient cycling, soil formation, water purification, and oxygen production. Such services
are best rendered by ecosystems that are diverse. Yet, through both intention and accident, humans have introduced exotic species that turn
biodiversity into monoculture. Fast-growing zebra mussels, for example, have outcompeted more than 15 species of native mussels in North
America's Great Lakes and have damaged harbors and water-treatment plants. Native prairies are becoming dominated by single species (often
genetically homogenous) of corn or wheat. Thanks to these developments,
soils will erode and become unproductive which, along with temperature change, will diminish agricultural yields. Meanwhile, with increased pollution and runoff, as well
as reduced forest cover, ecosystems will no longer be able to purify water; and a shortage of clean water spells
disaster. In many ways, oceans are the most vulnerable areas of all. As overfishing eliminates major predators, while polluted and warming
waters kill off phytoplankton, the intricate aquatic food web could collapse from both sides. Fish, on which so many
humans depend, will be a fond memory. As phytoplankton vanish, so does the ability of the oceans to
absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. (Half of the oxygen we breathe is made by phytoplankton,
with the rest coming from land plants.) Species extinction is also imperiling coral reefs - a major problem since these reefs
have far more than recreational value: They provide tremendous amounts of food for human populations and
buffer coastlines against erosion. In fact, the global value of "hidden" services provided by ecosystems - those services, like waste
disposal, that aren't bought and sold in the marketplace - has been estimated to be as much as $50 trillion per year, roughly equal to the gross
domestic product of all countries combined. And that doesn't include tangible goods like fish and timber. Life as we know it would be
impossible if ecosystems collapsed. Yet that is where we're heading if species extinction continues at its current pace. Extinction also has a huge
impact on medicine. Who really cares if, say, a worm in the remote swamps of French Guiana goes extinct? Well, those who suffer from
cardiovascular disease. The recent discovery of a rare South American leech has led to the isolation of a powerful enzyme that, unlike other
anticoagulants, not only prevents blood from clotting but also dissolves existing clots. And it's not just this one species of worm: Its wriggly
relatives have evolved other biomedically valuable proteins, including antistatin (a potential anticancer agent), decorsin and ornatin (platelet
aggregation inhibitors), and hirudin (another anticoagulant). Plants, too, are pharmaceutical gold mines. The bark of trees, for example, has
given us quinine (the first cure for malaria), taxol (a drug highly effective against ovarian and breast cancer), and aspirin. More than a quarter of
the medicines on our pharmacy shelves were originally derived from plants. The sap of the Madagascar periwinkle contains more than 70
useful alkaloids, including vincristine, a powerful anticancer drug that saved the life of one of our friends. Of the roughly 250,000 plant species
on Earth, fewer than 5 percent have been screened for pharmaceutical properties. Who knows what life-saving drugs remain to be discovered?
Given current extinction rates, it's estimated that we're losing one valuable drug every two years. Our arguments so far have tacitly assumed
that species are worth saving only in proportion to their economic value and their effects on our quality of life, an attitude that is strongly
ingrained, especially in Americans. That is why conservationists always base their case on an economic calculus. But we biologists know in our
hearts that there are deeper and equally compelling reasons to worry about the loss of biodiversity: namely, simple morality and intellectual
values that transcend pecuniary interests. What, for example, gives us the right to destroy other creatures? And what could be more thrilling
than looking around us, seeing that we are surrounded by our evolutionary cousins, and realizing that we all got here by the same simple
process of natural selection? To biologists, and potentially everyone else, apprehending the genetic kinship and common origin of all species is
a spiritual experience - not necessarily religious, but spiritual nonetheless, for it stirs the soul. But, whether or not one is moved by such
concerns, it is certain that our
future is bleak if we do nothing to stem this sixth extinction. We are creating a
world in which exotic diseases flourish but natural medicinal cures are lost; a world in which carbon
waste accumulates while food sources dwindle; a world of sweltering heat, failing crops, and impure
water. In the end, we must accept the possibility that we ourselves are not immune to extinction. Or, if we
survive, perhaps only a few of us will remain, scratching out a grubby existence on a devastated planet. Global warming will seem
like a secondary problem when humanity finally faces the consequences of what we have done to
nature: not just another Great Dying, but perhaps the greatest dying of them all.
No War
No scenario for great power war – laundry list
Deudney and Ikenberry ‘9 (Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins AND Albert G. Milbank
Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University (Jan/Feb, 2009, Daniel Deudney
and John Ikenberry, “The Myth of the Autocratic Revival: Why Liberal Democracy Will Prevail,” Foreign
Affairs)
This bleak outlook is based on an exaggeration of recent developments and ignores powerful countervailing factors and forces. Indeed, contrary to what the
revivalists describe, the
most striking features of the contemporary international landscape are the
intensification of economic globalization, thickening institutions, and shared problems of
interdependence. The overall structure of the international system today is quite unlike that of the nineteenth
century. Compared to older orders, the contemporary liberal-centered international order provides
a set of constraints and opportunities-of pushes and pulls-that reduce the likelihood of severe
conflict while creating strong imperatives for cooperative problem solving. Those invoking the nineteenth
century as a model for the twenty-first also fail to acknowledge the extent to which war as a path to conflict resolution and greatpower expansion has become largely obsolete. Most important, nuclear weapons have transformed
great-power war from a routine feature of international politics into an exercise in national suicide. With all of the
great powers possessing nuclear weapons and ample means to rapidly expand their deterrent forces, warfare among
these states has truly become an option of last resort. The prospect of such great losses has
instilled in the great powers a level of caution and restraint that effectively precludes major
revisionist efforts. Furthermore, the diffusion of small arms and the near universality of nationalism
have severely limited the ability of great powers to conquer and occupy territory inhabited by resisting
populations (as Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq have demonstrated). Unlike during the days of empire building in the nineteenth century,
states today cannot translate great asymmetries of power into effective territorial control; at most, they
can hope for loose hegemonic relationships that require them to give something in return. Also unlike in the nineteenth century, today the density
of trade, investment, and production networks across international borders raises even more the
costs of war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, to take one of the most plausible cases of a future
interstate war, would pose for the Chinese communist regime daunting economic costs, both
domestic and international. Taken together, these changes in the economy of violence mean that the
international system is far more primed for peace than the autocratic revivalists acknowledge.
Nuke war doesn’t cause extinction
Seitz ‘11 (Russell, served as an Associate of The Center for International Affairs and a Fellow of the
Department of Physics at Harvard. He is presently chief scientist at Microbubbles LLC, Nuclear winter
was and is debatable, Nature, 7 J U LY 2011, vol 475)
Alan Robock’s contention that there has been no real scientific debate about the ‘ nuclear winter’ concept is itself debatable (Nature 473, 275–276; 2011).
This potential climate disaster, popularized in Science in 1983, rested on the output of a one- dimensional model that was later
shown to overestimate the smoke a nuclear holocaust might engender. More refined estimates, combined with
advanced three-dimensional models (see go.nature.com/ kss8te), have dramatically reduced the extent and
severity of the projected cooling. Despite this, Carl Sagan, who co-authored the 1983 Science paper, went so far as to
posit “the extinction of Homo sapiens” (C. Sagan Foreign Affairs 63,75-77; 1984). Some regarded this apocalyptic
prediction as an exercise in mythology. George Rathjens of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
protested: “Nuclear winter is the worst example of the misrepresentation of science to the public in my
memory,” (see go.nature.com/yujz84) and climatologist Kerry Emanuel observed that the subject had “become
notorious for its lack of scientific integrity” (Nature 319, 259; 1986). Robocks single-digit fall in temperature is at
odds with the subzero (about -25°C) continental cooling originally projected for a wide spectrum of nuclear
wars. Whereas Sagan predicted darkness at noon from a US-Soviet nuclear conflict, Robock projects
global sunlight that is several orders of magnitude brighter for a Pakistan-India conflict — literally the
difference between night and day. Since 1983, the projected worst-case cooling has fallen from a
Siberian deep freeze spanning 11,000 degree- days Celsius (a measure of the severity of winters) to
numbers so unseasonably small as to call the very term ‘nuclear winter’ into question.
---Case---
No War
No GPW Extension
United States nuclear primacy solves all conflict- superior capabilities to both Russia
and China are only increasing
Engdahl ’14 (William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant
whose internationally best-selling books have been translated into thirteen foreign languages, “US
missile shield: ‘Russian Bear sleeping with one eye open’”, http://rt.com/op-edge/us-missile-shieldrussia-361/, February 17, 2014)
US nuclear primacy In a 2006 interview with London’s Financial Times, then US Ambassador to NATO, former Cheney advisor Victoria Nuland— the same person today
disgraced by a video of her phone discussion with US Ukraine Ambassador Pyatt on changing the Kiev government (“Fuck the EU”) — declared that the US wanted a “globally deployable
military force” that would operate everywhere – from Africa to the Middle East and beyond—“all across our planet.” Nuland then declared that it would include Japan and Australia as well as
the NATO nations. She added, “It’s a totally different animal.” She was referring to BMD plans of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon.
As nuclear strategy experts warned at
that time, more than eight years ago, deployment of even a minimal missile defense , under the
Pentagon’s then-new CONPLAN 8022, would give the US what the military called, “ Escalation
Dominance ”—the ability to win a war at any level of violence, including nuclear war. As the authors of a
seminal Foreign Affairs article back in April 2006 noted: “Washington's continued refusal to eschew a first strike and the country's development of a limited missile-defense capability take on a
new, and possibly more menacing, look… A nuclear war-fighting capability remains a key component of the United States' military doctrine and nuclear primacy remains a goal of the United
States.” The two authors of the Foreign Affairs piece, Lieber and Press, went on to outline the real consequences of the current escalation of BMD in Europe (and as well against China in
. .[T]he sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable
primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one—as an adjunct to a US First Strike capability, not
as a stand-alone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the
Japan): “.
targeted country would be left with only a tiny surviving arsenal — if any at all. At that point,
even a relatively modest or inefficient missile defense system might well be enough to protect against
any retaliatory strikes.” They concluded, “ Today , for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the
verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy
the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear
balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the U nited S tates' nuclear systems, the
precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's
nuclear forces.”
Counter-forcing solves escalation of wars
Mueller ‘9 (Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor of Political Science at Ohio
State University (John, “Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda” p. 8, Google
Books)
To begin to approach a condition that can credibly justify applying such extreme characterizations as societal annihilation, a full-out attack with hundreds, probably
Even in such extreme cases, the area actually devastated by the bombs' blast
and thermal pulse effective would be limited: 2,000 1-MT explosions with a destructive radius of 5 miles each would directly demolish
less than 5 percent of the territory of the United States, for example. Obviously, if major population centers were targeted, this sort
of attack could inflict massive casualties. Back in cold war days, when such devastating events sometimes seemed uncomfortably likely, a number of studies
were conducted to estimate the consequences of massive thermonuclear attacks. One of the most prominent of
these considered several probabilities. The most likely scenario--one that could be perhaps considered at least to begin to approach the rational--was
a "counterforce" strike in which well over 1,000 thermonuclear weapons would be targeted at America's ballistic missile silos,
strategic airfields, and nuclear submarine bases in an effort to destroy the country’s strategic ability to retaliate. Since
the attack would not directly target population centers, most of the ensuing deaths would be from radioactive
fallout, and the study estimates that from 2 to 20 million, depending mostly on wind, weather, and sheltering, would perish during
thousands, of thermonuclear bombs would be required.
the first month.15
No miscalc or escalation or lose nukes—every crisis ever disproves and neither side
would escilate
Quinlan ‘9 (Michael, Former Permanent Under-Sec. State – UK Ministry of Defense, “Thinking about
Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects”, p. 63-69) *we don’t endorse gendered language
Even if initial nuclear use did not quickly end the fighting, the supposition of inexorable momentum in a developing
exchange, with each side rushing to overreaction amid confusion and uncertainty, is implausible. It fails to consider what the
situation of the decisionmakers would really be.
Neither side could want escalation. Both would be appalled at
what was going on. Both
would be desperately looking for signs that the other was ready to call a halt. Both, given the
or concealment which modem delivery platforms and vehicles can possess, could have in reserve
significant forces invulnerable enough not to entail use-or-lose pressures. (It may be more open to question, as noted
capacity for evasion
earlier, whether newer nuclear-weapon possessors can be immediately in that position; but it is within reach of any substantial state with advanced technological
capabilities, and attaining it is certain to be a high priority in the development of forces.) As a result, neither
side can have any predisposition
to suppose, in an ambiguous situation of fearful risk, that the right course when in doubt is to go on copiously launching
weapons. And none of this analysis rests on
any presumption of highly subtle or pre-concerted
rationality . The rationality
required is plain. The argument is reinforced if we consider the possible reasoning of an aggressor at a more dispassionate level. Any substantial nuclear
armoury can inflict destruction outweighing any possible prize that aggression could hope to seize. A state attacking the
possessor of such an armoury must therefore be doing so (once given that it cannot count upon destroying the armoury pre-emptively)
on a judgement that the possessor would be found lacking in the will to use it. If the attacked possessor
used nuclear weapons, whether first or in response to the aggressor's own first use, this judgement would begin to look dangerously
precarious. There must be at least a substantial possibility of the aggressor leaders' concluding that their initial
judgement had been mistaken—that the risks were after all greater than whatever prize they had been seeking, and that for their own country's
survival they must call off the aggression. Deterrence planning such as that of NATO was directed in the first place to preventing the initial
misjudgement and in the second, if it were nevertheless made, to compelling such a reappraisal. The former aim had to have primacy, because it could not be taken
for granted that the latter was certain to work. But there was no ground for assuming in advance, for all possible scenarios, that the chance of its working must be
negligible. An
aggressor state would itself be at huge risk if nuclear war developed, as its leaders would
know. It may be argued that a policy which abandons hope of physically defeating the enemy and simply hopes to get him to desist is pure gamble, a matter of
who blinks first; and that the political and moral nature of most likely aggressors, almost ex hypothesi, makes them the less likely to blink. One response to this is to
ask what is the alternative—it can only be surrender. But a more positive and hopeful answer lies in the fact that the criticism is posed in a political vacuum. Real-life
conflict would have a political context. The context which concerned NATO during the cold war, for example, was one of defending vital interests against a
postulated aggressor whose own vital interests would not be engaged, or would be less engaged. Certainty is not possible, but a clear asymmetry of vital interest is
a legitimate basis for expecting an asymmetry, credible to both sides, of resolve in conflict. That places upon statesmen, as page 23 has noted, the key task in
deterrence of building up in advance a clear and shared grasp of where limits lie. That was plainly achieved in cold-war Europe. If vital interests have been defined in
a way that is dear, and also clearly not overlapping or incompatible with those of the adversary, a credible basis has been laid for the likelihood of greater resolve in
resistance. It was also sometimes suggested by critics that whatever might be indicated by theoretical discussion of political will and interests, the military
environment of nuclear warfare—particularly difficulties of communication and control—would drive escalation with overwhelming probability to the limit. But it is
obscure why matters should be regarded as inevitably .so for every possible level and setting of action. Even if the history of war suggested (as it scarcely does) that
military decision-makers are mostly apt to work on the principle 'When in doubt, lash out', the nuclear revolution creates an utterly new situation. The pervasive
reality, always plain to both sides during the cold war, is `If this goes on to the end, we are all ruined'. Given
that inexorable escalation would
mean catastrophe for both, it would be perverse to suppose them permanently incapable of framing
arrangements which avoid it. As page 16 has noted, NATO gave its military commanders no widespread delegated authority, in peace or war, to
launch nuclear weapons without specific political direction. Many types of weapon moreover had physical safeguards such as
PALs incorporated to reinforce organizational ones. There were multiple communication and control
systems for passing information, orders, and prohibitions. Such systems could not be totally guaranteed against disruption if at a
fairly intense level of strategic exchange—which was only one of many possible levels of conflict— an adversary judged it to be in his interest to weaken political
control. It was far from clear why he necessarily should so judge. Even then, however, it
remained possible to operate on a general fail-
safe presumption: no authorization, no use. That was the basis on which NATO operated. If it is feared that the arrangements which 1 a
nuclear-weapon possessor has in place do not meet such standards in some respects, the logical course is to continue to improve them rather than to assume
escalation to be certain and uncontrollable, with all the enormous inferences that would have to flow from such an assumption. The
likelihood of
escalation can never be 100 per cent, and never zero. Where between those two extremes it may lie can never
be precisely calculable in advance; and even were it so calculable, it would not be uniquely fixed—it would stand to vary hugely with
circumstances. That there should be any risk at all of escalation to widespread nuclear war must be deeply disturbing, and decision-makers would always have to
weigh it most anxiously. But a pair of key truths about it need to be recognized. The first is that the risk of escalation to large-scale nuclear war is inescapably
present in any significant armed conflict between nuclear-capable powers, whoever may have started the conflict and whoever may first have used any particular
category of weapon. The initiator of the conflict will always have physically available to him options for applying more force if he meets effective resistance. If the
risk of escalation, whatever its degree of probability, is to be regarded as absolutely unacceptable, the necessary inference is that a state attacked by a substantial
nuclear power must forgo military resistance. It must surrender, even if it has a nuclear armoury of its own. But the companion truth is that, as page 47 has noted,
the risk of escalation is an inescapable burden also upon the aggressor. The exploitation of that burden is the crucial route, if conflict does break out, for managing
it, to a tolerable outcome--the only route, indeed, intermediate between surrender and holocaust, and so the necessary basis for deterrence beforehand. The
working out of plans to exploit escalation risk most effectively in deterring potential aggression entails further and complex issues. It is for example plainly desirable,
wherever geography, politics, and available resources so permit without triggering arms races, to make provisions and dispositions that are likely to place the onus
of making the bigger, and more evidently dangerous steps in escalation upon the aggressor volib wishes to maintain his attack, rather than upon the defender. (The
customary shorthand for this desirable posture used to be 'escalation dominance'.) These issues are not further discussed here. But addressing them needs to start
from acknowledgement that there are in any event no certainties or absolutes available, no options guaranteed to be risk-free and cost-free. Deterrence is not
possible without escalation risk; and its presence can point to no automatic policy conclusion save for those who espouse outright pacifism and accept its
consequences. Accident and Miscalculation Ensuring
the safety and security of nuclear weapons plainly needs to be
taken most seriously. Detailed information is understandably not published, but such direct evidence as there is suggests that it
always has been so taken in every possessor state, with the inevitable occasional failures to follow strict
procedures dealt with rigorously. Critics have nevertheless from time to time argued that the possibility of accident involving nuclear weapons is
so substantial that it must weigh heavily in the entire evaluation of whether war-prevention structures entailing their existence should be tolerated at all. Two sorts
of scenario are usually in question. The first is that of a single grave event involving an unintended nuclear explosion—a technical disaster at a storage site, for
example, Dr the accidental or unauthorized launch of a delivery system with a live nuclear warhead. The second is that of some event—perhaps such an explosion
or launch, or some other mishap such as malfunction or misinterpretation of radar signals or computer systems—initiating a sequence of response and counterresponse that culminated in a nuclear exchange which no one had truly intended. No event that is physically possible can be said to be of absolutely zero probability
(just as at an opposite extreme it is absurd to claim, as has been heard from distinguished figures, that nuclear-weapon use can be guaranteed to happen within
some finite future span despite not having happened for over sixty years). But human affairs cannot be managed to the standard of either zero or total probability.
We have to assess levels between those theoretical limits and weigh their reality and implications against other factors, in security planning as in everyday life.
There have certainly been, across the decades since 1945, many known accidents involving nuclear weapons, from
transporters skidding off roads to bomber aircraft crashing with or accidentally dropping the weapons they carried ( in past days when such
carriage was a frequent feature of readiness arrangements----it no longer is). A few of these accidents may have released
into the nearby environment highly toxic material. None however has entailed a nuclear detonation. Some commentators suggest that
this reflects bizarrely good fortune amid such massive activity and deployment over so many years. A more rational deduction from the facts of this long experience
would however be that the
probability of any accident triggering a nuclear explosion is extremely low. It might be
mechanisms needed to set off such an explosion are technically demanding, and that in a
large number of ways the past sixty years have seen extensive improvements in safety arrangements for both
the design and the handling of weapons. It is undoubtedly possible to see respects in which, after the cold war, some of the factors bearing
upon risk may be new or more adverse; but some are now plainly less so. The years which the world has come through entirely without
further noted that the
accidental or unauthorized detonation have
included early decades in which knowledge was sketchier,
precautions were less developed, and weapon designs were less ultra-safe
than they later became, as
well as substantial periods in which weapon numbers were larger, deployments more widespread and
diverse, movements more frequent, and several aspects of doctrine and readiness arrangements more
tense. Similar considerations apply to the hypothesis of nuclear war being mistakenly triggered by false alarm. Critics again point to the fact, as it is understood,
of numerous occasions when initial steps in alert sequences for US nuclear forces were embarked upon, or at least called for, by, indicators mistaken or
misconstrued. In
none of these instances, it is accepted, did matters get at all near to nuclear launch-rival and more logical inference from hundreds of events
stretching over sixty years of experience presents itself once more: that the probability of initial
misinterpretation leading far towards mistaken launch is remote. Precisely because any nuclear-weapon
possessor recognizes the vast gravity of any launch, release sequences have many steps, and human
decision is repeatedly interposed as well as capping the sequences. To convey that because a first step was prompted the
extraordinary good fortune again, critics have suggested. But the
world somehow came close to accidental nuclear war is wild hyperbole, rather like asserting, when a tennis champion has lost his opening service game, that he was
nearly beaten in straight sets. History anyway scarcely
offers any ready example of major war started by accident even
before the nuclear revolution imposed an order-of-magnitude increase in caution. It was occasionally conjectured
that nuclear war might be triggered by the real but accidental or unauthorized launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a potential
such launch is known to have occurred in over sixty years . The probability of it is therefore very
low. But even if it did happen, the further hypothesis of it initiating a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It
fails to consider the real situation of decision-makers as pages 63-4 have brought out. The notion that cosmic
adversary. No
holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated in this way belongs to science fiction.
Nuke War ≠ Extinction
Nuclear Winter theory is based on flawed data
Ball 6— Professor at the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre at the Australian National University,
former Head of the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, former Co-chairman of the Steering Committee
of the Council for Security Cooperation in Asia-Pacific [Desmond, May, “The Probabilities of On the
Beach: Assessing ‘Armageddon Scenarios’ in the 21st Century,”
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/papers/sdsc/wp/wp_sdsc_401.pdf]
In the early 1980s, various scientists and scientific organisations questioned the simplicity of these calculations, and especially
their neglect of longer-term ecological and environmental consequences. Atmospheric physicists and biologists/ecologists
demonstrated that the sudden injection of a couple of hundred million tonnes of smoke, soot and other particulate matter into
the upper atmosphere would have catastrophic environmental consequences, characterised as ‘Nuclear Winter’. They argued
that an all-out exchange would involve expenditure of 5,000 to 10,000 megatons. The most widely cited baseline scenario
involved some 14,750 warheads with a total of 5,750 megatons, with almost every city in the world with a population of three
million or more being attacked with fifteen warheads totalling ten megatons and those with populations of 1-3 million each being
allocated three 1 megaton weapons. A baseline counter-force scenario allocated 4,000 megatons to strategic counterforce
targets, which ignited wildfires over 500,000 square kilometres of forest, brush and grasslands, consuming some 0.5 grams per
square centimetre of fuel in the process and producing some 76.5 million tonnes of smoke. This was said to ‘follow statistically’
from the fact that ‘approximately 50
percent of the land areas in the countries likely to be involved in a nuclear
exchange are covered by forest or brush, which are flammable about 50 percent of the time’. 6 The leading
populariser of the ‘Nuclear Winter’ hypothesis was Carl Sagan, the brilliant planetary scientist and humanist. He had noticed in
1971, when Mariner 1 was examining Mars, that the planet was subject to global dust storms which markedly affected the
atmospheric and surface temperatures. Large amounts of dust in the upper atmosphere absorbed sunlight, heating the
atmosphere but cooling the surface, spreading ‘cold and darkness’ over the planet. He recognised that wholesale ground-bursts
of nuclear weapons and the incineration of hundreds of cities could produce sufficient dust and smoke to cause a similar effect
Sagan even postulated the existence of some threshold level— around 100 million tonnes
of smoke—for production of ‘Nuclear Winter’. 7 I argued vigorously with Sagan about the ‘Nuclear Winter’
on the Earth.
hypothesis, both in lengthy correspondence and, in August-September 1985, when I was a guest in the lovely house he and
with more realistic data about the
operational characteristics of the respective US and Soviet force configurations (such as bomber delivery profiles, impact
footprints of MIRVed warheads) and more plausible exchange scenarios, it was impossible to generate anywhere
near the postulated levels of smoke. The megatonnage expended on cities (economic/industrial targets) was more
Ann Druyan had overlooking Ithaca in up-state New York. I argued that,
likely to be around 140-650 than over 1,000; the amount of smoke generated would have ranged from around 18 million tonnes
to perhaps 80 million tonnes. In the case of counter-force scenarios, most missile forces were (and still are) located in either
ploughed fields or tundra and, even where they are generally located in forested or grassed areas, very few of the actual missile
silos are less than several kilometres from combustible material. A target-by-target
analysis of the actual locations
of the strategic nuclear forces in the United States and the Soviet Union showed that the actual
amount of smoke produced even by a 4,000 megaton counter-force scenario would range from only
300 tonnes (if the exchange occurred in January) to 2,000 tonnes (for an exchange in July)—the worst case
being a factor of 40 smaller than that postulated by the ‘Nuclear Winter’ theorists. I thought that it was
just as wrong to overestimate the possible consequences of nuclear war, and to raise the spectre of extermination of human life
as a serious likelihood, as to underestimate them (e.g., by omitting fallout casualties).
Small Farms
ADT = NAIS
The USDA compared ADT to NAIS
McGeary, et al 12 (Judiath- Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, Email to the office of management
and budget detailing the objections to ADT- over 10 different organizations signed on in support, June 6,
“Re: USDA-APHIS Animal Disease Traceability Final Rule RIN: 0579-AD24”, http://www.rcalfusa.com/wp-content/uploads/animal_id/120606-OMB-Letter-updated.pdf
IV. USDA failed to consider alternatives to its ADT proposal In considering alternatives to the proposed rule, the agency did
not consider the alternative that was proposed by many cattle organizations to identify only the breeding herd and not phasing in feeder cattle.
Nor did the agency consider the alternative of not imposing new regulatory burdens on poultry owners. Instead, the
agency compared
the proposed rule only to its failed proposal for the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). NAIS,
which was withdrawn by the USDA in February 2010 after widespread, vocal opposition from tens of thousands of people, would have required
that every single person who owned even one livestock or poultry animal register their property in a government database, identify each
animal (in many cases with electronic forms of identification), and report a long list of “events” to a database within 24 hours. The
NAIS
was an absurdly expensive and unnecessary program , and using it as the baseline against which to compare the ADT
rule was inappropriate and inconsistent with the reasons behind requiring regulatory impact analyses.
NAIS Bad-disease
NAIS increases disease risks through faulty monitoring
Smith Thomas No Date (Heather Smith Thomas- author of 20 books and thousands of articles on
animal health care, “The NAIS Controversy
Part I”, http://www.dairygoatjournal.com/84-6/heather_smith_thomas/ )
By now most people who own farm animals have heard about the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) plan that’s being pushed by
USDA, but many of us are still finding out how this might affect us-with premises registration, individual animal ID and tracking requirements. In
spite of the fact USDA has no legal authority to force this system on us, the agency has pushed forward with plans to have it
mandatory by 2009. As of March 2006, 235,000 premises (10 percent of national total) had been registered and USDA predicted that 475,000 of
our two million premises will be registered by the end of 2006. USDA says much of the NAIS is now operational and that remaining elements
soon will be. Plans are for having all databases operational by early 2007, and 100 percent of all premises registered (and all nine billion target
animals given ID) by January 2009. USDA has a contingency plan to make this "voluntary" program mandatory "if participation rates are not
adequate." Secretary Johanns says this has been high priority with USDA; "we’ve made significant strides toward achieving a comprehensive
U.S. system. We recognize that this represents one of the largest systematic changes ever faced by the livestock industry and we have
welcomed suggestions from stakeholders to ensure that we continue to gain momentum." Yet some of the stakeholders have never had the
chance for input and are just now learning about drastic changes this system will entail. A
huge number of animal owners who
will be greatly affected by the NAIS plan were never informed about what was happening, since the USDA
only discussed the plan with large producer groups and ignored small, independent farmers. USDA claimed that "listening
sessions" held by APHIS (June through November, 2004) produced 59 out of 60 comments in support of the NAIS. This was a distortion-since
these were closed meetings; the people who attended them were carefully chosen. By contrast, after USDA announced the program publicly in
July 2005, a listening session in Texas drew more than 700 comments, a majority of which were opposed to the program. How did the NAIS
evolve? This ambitious project was spawned by the NIAA (National Institute for Animal Agriculture), a self-appointed group made up of many
organizations involved in animal agriculture, including some of the largest corporations (such as Monsanto, Cargill Meat, National Pork
Producers) and many manufacturers of high-tech animal equipment (Allflex, Digital Angel, Global Vet Link, Micro Beef Technologies, etc.). Some
of them have a vested interest in a national animal ID program because it will ensure more markets and higher prices for their meat or for ID
equipment. The NIAA brings together interested parties from government and industry to discuss issues in animal agriculture and to create
action plans. Neil Hammerschmidt, Coordinator for the NAIS at USDA (APHIS), helped develop an international program before he took charge
of the U.S. ID program. During 1998-2003 (just prior to his present position) he chaired the ID and Information committee of the NIAA and was
involved in the International Committee on Animal Recording and the ISO (International Standards Organization) Working Group for
International Standards for Electronic Identification of Animals. Some of the big players in the livestock/meat packing industry want a strong
foreign market for their beef and a lion’s share of the domestic market. The international trade market is part of what is driving the NAIS plan.
In 2003 our beef exports brought $7.5 billion. This market crashed after the first cow with BSE was discovered in the U.S. (a cow that came
originally from a Canadian herd); in 2005 beef exports were down to $1.22 billion because some countries refused to buy our beef. So packers
and their trade associates want to restore and enhance the export market. They want traceability of animals (since many foreign markets
demand it). Some of the largest domestic markets for beef are also demanding traceability. McDonalds claims traceability for 10 percent of
their meat and wants 100 percent; Wal-Mart demands 100 percent. These demands put pressure on meat processors who then want producers
to provide traceable (tagged) products. Why
not keep it voluntary? Systems already in place for tracking animal
diseases and movements in this country have worked. Brand laws, health certificates, control programs
for brucellosis, TB, scrapie, etc. have done a good job. We haven’t had a case of foot and mouth disease in the U.S. since
1929. BSE is a non-contagious disease caused by cattle eating feed containing body parts of cattle with BSE. The sale of feed supplements
containing rendered animal parts was banned in the U.S. in 1997. The only way we can get it is by importing animals (and meat) from other
countries. The
best defense against foreign animal diseases is monitoring of imported animals and meatnot by making every U.S. owner ID their livestock. If some people want to export animals or meat they could voluntarily
participate in value-added programs. A national ID program should be voluntary or limited to animals most likely
to be included in international commerce-without government imposing an intrusive system on every
premises that has a farm animal. The new USDA Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs (which include APHIS,
which puts him in charge of the NAIS), Bruce Knight, stated at the hearing for his nomination that he thought the program should be kept
voluntary. But this may be a ploy to pacify the growing opposition to the program. In June 2006 USDA put out a "Guide for Small Scale or Noncommercial Producers" which implies that the program is completely voluntary and has no penalties or enforcement provisions. But when
pressed for comment in a news conference, USDA Secretary Johanns made it very clear that if voluntary participation was not 100 percent, he
had the authority to make the program mandatory. Indeed, if USDA had no thought of making it mandatory and didn’t really care whether
people participated or not, why would they be spending so much money and pushing so hard to implement it? Shortcomings of the RFID
system The
NAIS dictates that every farm animal (other than those in large commercial groups like pigs and chickens that stay
together from birth to slaughter and have one group number) must have an individual ID number. These can be ear tags or
implanted microchips. The NAIS stipulates use of the ISO (International Standards Organization) 134.2 kHz (kilohertz) frequency chips-the type
used in many European countries. There are several kinds of microchips, however. In the U.S., horse owners, pet owners and other animal
owners have been using an American chip system (125 kHz) to provide secure ID for registered animals, to help prevent theft, locate missing
animals, etc. For pets and horses, for instance, there are private tracking systems that work together and have been in place for 15 years. After
Hurricane Katrina, 364 horses were gathered up and all but one returned to their owners because they had microchips. Most horses in
Louisiana have microchips already (in conjunction with the state’s Coggins testing program to eliminate Equine Infectious Anemia), but these
are the 125 kHz chips. A private database network gives horse and pet owners immediate assistance when an animal is missing or stolen. There
are scanners for these chips in nearly every law enforcement office, animal shelter, etc. across the country. The ISO scanners, however, can’t
detect these chips. The USDA is hurrying to put their ISO type scanners into the field to accommodate the type of chip they want us all to use,
but it will take awhile to get enough out there, and unless the new scanners are dual readers, any 125 kHz chips won’t be detected. Yet dual
readers are not reliable because they don’t "read" each chip at the same speed. The
two systems are not effectively cross
compatible. Scanners designed to read both frequencies are not efficient nor reliable because only one frequency can be prioritized within
the scanner. This leaves the other in second place and vulnerable to being missed. In a recent study by Proctor
and Gamble, a scanner designed to read only the 125 kHz chip produced 100 percent read efficiency, while a scanner designed to read both
frequencies missed 50 percent of the chips. In any ID program, it is essential that scanners read microchips quickly and accurately. Scanners
operate at top efficiency (and are most reliable) when built to read one frequency, not several. One
reason the U.S. system has
worked so well is because we have just one frequency and all scanners read all the chips that operate at
that frequency. The 125 kHz system is an American system that’s been in use for more than 15 years. Many countries (including most of
South America) have never used the ISO system the USDA wants us to use, because the latter is an open system and easily compromised. It was
originally developed in Russia and Europe to identify tractor parts and commodities for the international European market. A scanner in
Germany or France, for instance, could "read" a chip on an Italian part and know what it was. The 134.2 kHz chip has a 15 digit number, the first
three digits being a country code. Because
the ISO system is open (in the public domain, with published standards any chip
manufacturer can follow) there is no legal way to stop production of unsanctioned chips. The problem with
using this type of chip for disease trace-back, bio-security or unique ID for ownership proof, breed
registry number or theft and fraud prevention is there is no guarantee of uniqueness of ID codes . There
are several ways the ID codes can be counterfeited in an open standard. Chips can be ordered factory programmed with desired numbers, and
some manufacturers are selling reprogrammable chips indistinguishable from factory-programmed chips. Some chips can be reprogrammed as
many times as you want, even after they’re in an animal or an ear tag. An implanted chip’s number can be read by a small hand-held device
that can then be used to put that number on another chip in a different animal. Duplicate numbers weren’t a problem in the original setting for
which the ISO system was developed (commodities-to make sure certain types of paper products made by different companies would fit your
printer, for instance), but they are a problem for animal ID. Because ear tags in livestock are often lost, the ISO group in 2001 decided to allow
for retagging animals with a new tag carrying the same chip number as the lost one, and allowed for blank chips that can be programmed. Then
reprogrammable chips were allowed. In a May, 2001 ISO document describing their criteria for replacing lost animal chips, they stated it would
be disastrous if these blank chips fell into the wrong hands. Instead of trying to preserve the integrity of the system they essentially said "you
can duplicate and reprogram these tags", but "we are not responsible." An
open system won’t work for a national database
for disease control or for valuable animals that need unique ID to prevent theft or animal-switching. A
look-alike could pose for a more valuable animal. An animal from another country could appear to be
one from the U.S. or vice versa. USDA is not being realistic in thinking we can use this system for
dependable animal trace-back to farm of origin, or to thwart bio-terrorism. A published open standard for
something that’s supposed to provide unique or secure ID won’t work. According to Barbara Masin, the U.S. member of the ISO board, "This
would be like our government publishing the standard for dollar bills, telling people exactly what paper to use, what color ink, etc. so anyone
could do it!" This is not a good system upon which to base a national animal ID program! USDA and others who are pushing for the ISO 134.2
kHz chip required by the NAIS tell us this is an international standard and our country must comply. But they’re not telling us this standard is
flawed and many countries don’t use it. This
"standard" was created as the result of political compromise and has
many flaws regarding performance and technical feasibility. More than 60 countries besides the U.S. have not adopted
this system and many of the countries using it are not happy with it and have asked that the standard be repealed. There were so many
complaints last year that the matter was put to a vote, and 50 percent of the voting nations in the ISO group voted to have the standard
repealed or revised. Thus it is not the universally accepted technology that some people claim it to be. There are suspicions that this system
was chosen mainly because of the market advantage it will give certain players who helped create the NAIS. People who are aware of the
problems with the ISO system wonder why USDA is dictating the use of this particular chip. Barbara Masin, who sits on the ISO board, says it is
not suitable, and "when this was being discussed for livestock, our ISO board approached the USDA and attempted to communicate with
everyone from Anne Venneman (Secretary of Agriculture at that time) on down, and they did not return our calls. I went to the USDA listening
sessions and offered to show them the problem with duplication possibilities, but they didn’t want to see it. The situation is very political. There
are certain people involved within the USDA who have very close ties to certain manufacturers. There is an underlying agenda, unfortunately,"
says Masin. The flaws in this system have been well documented as far back as 1995, she says. "It’s unfortunate that
when the discussion at USDA was happening for the livestock standard, it wasn’t an open discussion." Listening sessions were "closed" with
crowd control supervision. "USDA did not want to see any information against the system, and did not respond to efforts to show them what
was going on in other countries," says Masin. USDA continues to push on with their agenda, telling stockmen to use these tags
with this RIFD frequency, but they don’t have enough "read range" to be practical. Scanners must be practically at touching distance. Cattle,
sheep and goats must be restrained (in a chute, or held) to get close enough for accurate scanning. In field tests, a high percentage of tags or
implanted chips can’t be detected when animals come off a truck or go through a sale ring. One sale yard reported "read rates" as low as 47
percent for feeder pigs and 66 percent for sheep. Environmental factors (weather, lighting in a sale barn, type of fencing, electromagnetic
interference from motors used in the auction yard) can interfere with the scanners in sale barns; they can’t pick up the low frequency chips.
Sale barn owners worry that they can’t afford the equipment and also wonder if the complications of the ID system will lead more stockmen to
sell directly to feedlots or packers; it all adds up to more small markets going out of business. Equity Livestock (an outfit with 13 sale barns in
Iowa and Wisconsin) recently spent $70,000 for scanners, software and extra labor to test electronic ID at one of their yards, but feels this cost
would be hard to justify in smaller operations.
AT: Increases Disease
Traceability eliminates proven methods in favor of one that increases risk of disease
Lewis 12 (Patrice- Backwoods Home Magazine contributor, Issue 137 Sep/Oct 2012, “Animal disease
traceability”, http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/lewis137.html)
FARFA lodged its opposition to ADT on many points: First, ADT's costs significantly outweigh its benefits. The USDA has failed
to provide scientific support justifying these new regulations. Traceability is an unproven approach, particularly in light of
the success of tuberculosis and brucellosis vaccination programs. When FARFA submitted a very specific
list requesting solid facts and data to support the need for Animal Disease Traceability, the majority of
the questions remained unanswered (which sounds either like a case of "We really don't have the answers for that" or maybe
even "If we ignore them they'll go away"). Second, FARFA maintains that the agency's Regulatory Impact Analysis is
significantly flawed and fails to properly address the costs of the proposed rules. It's an understatement that
government agencies routinely and severely underestimate the costs and impact on those who are regulated. ADT is no exception. The agency
is "encouraging the use of lower-cost technology" such as electronic ear tags, but the
infrastructure and labor necessary to
place tags on livestock is not as simple as it sounds. Range cattle are large, ornery, and generally not in the mood to be
subdued in a chute and tagged. Indirect costs associated with this ruling may include the purchasing or
construction of chutes, hiring additional labor, legal requirements to sale barns and veterinarians, vet
charges and farm calls, and even increased insurance requirements for labor. This doesn't even address
the cost to the taxpayers for hiring personnel to manage an enormous computerized database of
information. The vast bulk of the cost associated with compliance will not fall on those who benefit the
most from implementation. The costs will be born by producers and associated businesses (such as sale barns
and veterinarians), but the benefits will be reaped by exporters and digital chip manufacturers — because,
yes, the ear tags and leg bands favored under the current version of ADT contain NAIS-style RFID chips.
Third, FARFA believes many aspects of livestock production should be exempt. For instance, feeder cattle (cattle
under 18 months of age) and poultry should be excluded to avoid harming producers and sales barns and to
avoid problems like the impossible burden of having to band, re-band, and re-band birds — and report each banding — as
their legs grow. Banding adult birds and obtaining Interstate Certificates of Veterinary Inspection (ICVIs) would likely cost more than the value
of the bird. Dairy cattle should be better defined and those in small operations should be exempted and rules concerning horses should be
simplified and made more clear. Currently,
the ADT could horse be interpreted to mean that horse owners would
have to get permission from every single state an animal passes through on the way to a rodeo or show.
FARFA also wants brands and tattoos officially recognized forms of identification, subject to states' abilities to opt out. The proposed rule
"downgrades brands to an unofficial form of identification," notes Ms. McGeary. "Yet producers in brand states know that branding is an
extremely reliable method for identifying animals." And unlike ear tags, brands and tattoos are things an animal can't lose. Additionally,
removing brands and tattoos as official forms of identification could have ramifications on the legal and practical status of the animal. Also,
FARFA maintains that cattle moving directly to slaughter should be identified with backtags, not ear tags. Backtags reduce stress on the animals,
speed up efficiency, reduce hazards to workers, and cost less. FARFA also suggested that the USDA reduce the record-keeping requirements to
avoid imposing undue burdens on producers, veterinarians, state officials, and sale barns. The
proposed justification for the
extra paperwork does not hold up under examination in "real world" situations. Vets and livestock sale barns
would be required to keep records on cattle for five years, even though most of the cattle being documented will have already been consumed
long before. This
would create mountains of useless paperwork. Costs to producers for veterinary services
are likely to rise as well, since vets will need to pass the additional costs of regulatory paperwork on to the producers. And vets who
specialize in large-animal care are already in short supply. (Trust me on this.) Additionally, keep in mind one critical factor: Livestock
owners who duck under the radar and refuse to tag their animals are far less likely to seek veterinary
care when they encounter a health problem, because vets may be required to report them for
noncompliance. The livestock owners could be subject to unspecified penalties. Clearly this is counterproductive if the
USDA's intent is to control disease . FARFA also wants standards for using more than one form of
official identification to be consistent and reasonable. Currently the proposed rule would prohibit —
prohibit! — multiple official identification devices or methods on the same animal (with certain exceptions).
Personally, I find this extraordinary; and it demonstrates that those making the ruling are unfamiliar with the hands-on realities of livestock. The
proposed ruling gives preference to electronic ear tags; but ear tags can be lost on a regular basis (trust me on this). That's why additional
identification such as brands and tattoos should be recognized and maintained. FARFA identified many other problems. For instance, the
proposed rule defines livestock as "all farm-raised animals." Clearly this is vague and open to problems of interpretation. What about livestock
(such as chickens or goats) raised in urban environments? What about farm-raised dogs bred for sale? Don't laugh; these are serious issues that
require specific definitions. Finally, FARFA recommended that the proposed rule not be adopted at all until performance standards and
evaluations have been determined. "In
effect," notes FARFA, "the agency is asking producers to provide it with a
'blank check,' signing on to a program when the consequences are unknown. That blank check could be
expensive. The agency has not accurately evaluated all of the direct and indirect costs of the proposed rule to producers and sale barns,
such as the costs in time and potential injuries to both people and animals. In addition, the costs to States remain unknown, an
issue of deep concern at a time when many State agencies are facing dramatic cuts to their budgets."
[image omitted] Put on the brakes Bottom line, FARFA is urging the USDA to identify the specific diseases of concern and analyze how to best
address those diseases (including prevention measures) rather than continuing to push a one-size-fits-all tracking program with numerous builtin problems. And remember, it's
not the small producers who are the problem children in the food supply chain.
It's the huge agribusinesses who deal with large numbers of animals in filthy disease-ridden conditions
that are of greater concern. If the export market would benefit from the proposed rule, as the agency claims, then the packing
companies that export meat should pay the costs and offer economic premiums to livestock producers to encourage them to participate in a
voluntary system. Rather
than forcing homesteaders and small farmers and ranchers into compliance with an
untested tracking system, the USDA would do better to improve preventative measures in agribusiness
facilities rather than after-the-fact tracking.
Exports
Traceability helps exports
Traceability huge for US beef competitiveness
Maday 15(John Maday- Editor Bovine Veterinarian magazine and Managing Editor CattleNetwork,
“ADT update”, http://www.cattlenetwork.com/news/industry/adt-update ,March 27, 2015)
Shere also pointed out that APHIS is under pressure from other government agencies and industry over the lack
of a comprehensive farm-to-fork traceability system and its impact on trade. Most of our competitors for
international meat exports have such a system, and use it as leverage against the United States in
trade negotiations. Some critical import markets, including China, cite our lack of traceability in
refusing imports of U.S. beef . International trade falls outside the official goals of the ADT program, which was designed to help
minimize and contain potential disease outbreaks. Many in the industry however, believe we need a more
comprehensive traceability program to help ensure future competitiveness in international markets.
Shere says unnamed independent beef supply chains have approached USDA with proposals for pilot
projects to demonstrate their birth-to-slaughter traceability systems, with the goal of gaining access to
the Chinese market for their branded beef.
US exports displace local production
US meat exports stop local production
Clark and Hawkes 12 (Sarah E. Clark-former IATP intern and master's degree candidate in
international agriculture and trade policy at Tufts University. Dr Corinna Hawkes-Honorary Research
Fellow, Centre for Food Policy, City University London. “Exporting Obesity”,
http://www.iatp.org/documents/exporting-obesity ,Published April 5, 2012)
There’s little doubt that the industrialization of agriculture in the U.S. has increased calorie output tremendously. One key component was
federal investment in, and policies prioritizing certain agricultural research and development—in particular, focused on
how to increase production, typically for corn, wheat and livestock commodities. A second key component has been
policies that set out, initially, to protect farm income and, subsequently, policies that promoted commodity production,
even when production levels appear to have undercut farm income. In the mid-20th century, for example, U.S.
agricultural policy included various mechanisms to manage the farm supply of commodities, in part through limits on production and through
price floors. These policies dampened volatility in both commodity supplies and prices. In
the last quarter of the 20th century,
public policy moved away from supply management. Commodity firms and food processors pushed for
these changes, precisely because greater production would mean lower prices for these commodities.
Low prices, especially for corn and soybeans, in turn attracted livestock and dairy producers to begin using these commodities as feed. Today,
meat and dairy producers are the largest end-users of corn and soybeans. Decreasing commodity prices also led to the proliferation of novel
products derived from them, such as high fructose syrup from corn, and hydrogenated vegetable oil from soybeans. These in turn served as
inexpensive ingredients in a plethora of processed foods, usually relatively dense in calories but low in nutritive value. Commodity
overproduction and depressed prices for commodities in the U.S. led the government to seek new
export markets for U.S. grains (and, more recently, U.S. meat). However, the sale overseas of U.S. commodities at
prices less than the cost of domestic production—i.e., “dumping”—has been tied to the loss of
economic value from agriculture in developing countries, resulting in hunger and depressed production
in rural communities abroad.
AT: Increases meat prices
Increasing the price decreases the consumption-Current meat prices unsustainable-for environment and consumers
NewScientist 15 (“The world pays too high a price for cheap meat”,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530052.900-the-world-pays-too-high-a-price-for-cheapmeat.html#.VWSjl8_BzRY ,22 January 2015)
NOT long ago, a meal centred on meat was a rare treat. No longer. Most of us in the West now eat meat every day; many
consume it at every meal. And people in less carnivorous cultures are getting a taste for it, too: in China it
has become aspirational. Worldwide meat production has surged
from 78 million tonnes per year in 1963 to
308 million tonnes in 2014. The problem, setting aside issues around the morality of eating animals, is that
the planet cannot
support this growing appetite. Pasture used to graze livestock already accounts for 26 per cent of the planet's ice-free landmass;
the meat industry is responsible for 15 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions. There is a strong case that
meat is now too cheap, its price pushed down by ever more intensive farming practices. While that is
ostensibly good for consumers, it's
bad for the environment – in terms of pollution and antibiotic resistance, as well as climate – and
very often bad for animals. And it can be bad for consumers if corners are cut to keep prices low (16 February 2013, p 6). Is it
possible to push the price back up? Governments have succeeded in reducing the consumption of
alcohol and tobacco by taxing them. But a "sin tax" on meat lacks the clear case established for drinking and smoking: there is
mixed evidence on potential links between high levels of meat consumption, cancer and heart disease. And it depends on exactly what you eat
(see "Let them eat steak: How to eat meat the healthy way"). A more viable option might be to pull back on the agricultural subsidies that
underpin meat production.
AT: Prices High Now
Neg’s evidence is a snapshot of a temporary spike-Aff transforms long term
consumption via changing the structure of food production
Bittman 08 (Mark Bittman-writer New York Times, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler”
,http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?pagewanted=2 ,January 27,
2008)
These problems originated here, but are no longer limited to the United States. While the domestic demand
for meat has leveled off, the industrial production of livestock is growing more than twice as fast as landbased methods, according to the United Nations. Perhaps the best hope for change lies in consumers’ becoming aware of the true costs of
industrial meat production. “When you look at environmental problems in the U.S.,” says Professor Eshel, “nearly all of them have their source
in food production and in particular meat production. And factory farming is ‘optimal’ only as long as degrading waterways is free.
If
dumping this stuff becomes costly — even if it simply carries a non-zero price tag — the
entire structure of food production will change dramatically. ” Animal welfare may not yet be a major concern,
but as the horrors of raising meat in confinement become known, more animal lovers may start to react. And would the world not be a better
place were some of the grain we use to grow meat directed instead to feed our fellow human beings? Real
prices of beef, pork and
poultry have held steady, perhaps even decreased, for 40 years or more (in part because of grain subsidies),
though we’re beginning to see them increase now. But many experts, including Tyler Cowen, a professor
of economics at George Mason University, say they don’t believe meat prices will rise high enough to
affect demand in the United States. “I just don’t think we can count on market prices to reduce our meat
consumption,” he said. “There may be a temporary spike in food prices, but it will almost certainly be
reversed and then some. But if all the burden is put on eaters, that’s not a tragic state of affairs.”
Solvency
AT: ADT more efficient
ADT is inefficient and patchwork
Maday 15(John Maday- Editor Bovine Veterinarian magazine and Managing Editor CattleNetwork,
“ADT update”, http://www.cattlenetwork.com/news/industry/adt-update ,March 27, 2015)
The federal Animal Disease Traceability (ADT) program is up and running, but challenges including inconsistencies
in state requirements and mixed messages regarding program goals continue to slow progress toward true
traceability. Those points were clear during the recent National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA) conference in Indianapolis where the
NIAA Animal Identification and Information Systems Council received an update from USDA officials and others.
AT: USDA reforms/good
The USDA fails to regulate well due to favoring big ag over small farms
Faillace 08 (Linda Faillace-author of Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA's War on a Family
Farm, “Vermont Farm Leader, Linda Faillace, on Why the USDA Will Not Allow US Beef Producer,
Creekstone Farms, to Test Cows for Mad Cow Disease”,
https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/vermont-farm-leader-linda-faillace-why-usda-will-not-allowus-beef-producer-creekstone-farms ,September 26, 2008)
How much longer should we defer to a governmental agency that has consistently failed to perform its
duties? The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is charged with protecting the American food supply,
yet not a week goes by without another food-related health scare seizing headlines across the nation:
listeria in pasteurized milk; spinach contaminated with E. coli; and potentially unsafe meat from "downer" cattle (animals which are sick or
injured and unable to stand). This past spring tomatoes and peppers were accused of causing 1,442 illnesses and two deaths, yet the USDA is
still unable to confirm the source of the salmonella infections. These
outbreaks are the results of decades of USDA policy
decisions which favor corporations and industrial agriculture over small family farms and local
production. Intensive animal and crop operations can lead to sick animals and tainted vegetables entering the food chain, and regulations
which would prevent these incidents are often overlooked when corporate interests are at stake. A prime example is the USDA's (mis) handling
of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow" disease. Europe has dealt with BSE for more than twenty-one years and has an
extensive surveillance program in place: just last year approximately 9.7 million cattle were tested. While Europe tested millions, the USDA
tested a few thousand and arrogantly proclaimed the United States was free of BSE, until the first case was discovered in 2003. Export markets
dried up overnight. Japan and Korea, two of the largest importers of American beef, demanded the USDA either test for BSE or halt beef sales.
The United States refused and a trade war quickly ensued. To date, tens of thousands of Koreans have taken to the streets to protest their
government's acceptance of untested American beef. Subsequently, Japanese
and Korean top officials have been either
severely criticized or forced to resign for allowing imports of US beef into their countries. Creekstone Farms
raises all natural, premium beef and had a very lucrative overseas market until the first case of BSE. Anxious to re-establish trade, Creekstone
contacted the USDA to purchase BSE testing kits, but the USDA denied them access to the kits and threatened fines and even imprisonment if
Creekstone attempted to test their cattle. Creekstone Farms filed a federal suit against the USDA, demanding the right to test. In 2007, a
federal district court ruled in their favor. The USDA quickly appealed-and won. In a decision last week, D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Karen
LeCraft Henderson overturned the district court's ruling and made repeated references to the fact that Congress gave the USDA broad powers.
"We owe USDA a considerable degree of deference in its interpretation of the term, bearing, as it does, on USDA's charge to 'administer our
federal meat and poultry inspection laws,'" she stated. But the USDA does not deserve this deference. When the Humane Society released
undercover footage of animal abuse and downer cattle going into the human food supply while USDA officials were on site, Americans were
outraged and called for action. The USDA worked with the California-based company to organize the largest meat recall in history-143 million
pounds. What the American public was not told was that the recall was for all the meat the company had produced over the previous two
years, and the vast majority of it had already been consumed. The
USDA should be supporting the decentralization of the
beef industry. USDA inspectors were already on site, so more inspections would not have made a difference, nor would more regulations.
The best suggestion is for the USDA to support smaller slaughterhouses instead of forcing them out of
business with burdensome regulations necessary for the industrial meat processors. Our family farm, which
produced high quality breeding stock and gourmet cheese, experienced the USDA's ineptness and corruption first hand when they targeted our
healthy flock of sheep for BSE, a disease which does not exist in sheep. Our decade-long battle with the USDA and a subsequent lawsuit has
revealed a laundry list of documented misdeeds against us including: destruction of evidence, suppression of test results, extensive undercover
surveillance, and misleading and false statements given to the general public and our elected officials. The most egregious was an armed
invasion of our family farm and the subsequent seizure and destruction of our animals and livelihood. In an attempt to find a nonexistent
disease, the USDA used every possible BSE testing method on our sheep, sometimes running five or six tests per animal, but to no avail. Our
sheep were healthy. None of our sheep had BSE or any other disease. However, when a brief "enhanced" BSE surveillance program uncovered
three cases of BSE in American cattle, the USDA quickly announced it would reduce testing for BSE by 90 percent, not increase-reduce. How is
this protecting the American public? The USDA does not want to test American cattle for BSE and they are preventing any private company
from doing so. The question is Why? Once again it comes down to the corporate-controlled USDA doing the bidding of its corporate sponsors,
in this case the beef packers, slaughterhouses, and feed lots-rather than what is best for the American public. The Creekstone v USDA lawsuit
will head back to federal district court for one more ruling, and along with Chief Judge Sentelle who gave the dissenting opinion on the appeals
court decision, I will be watching to see if the district court's review of USDA's denial to allow Creekstone to test can survive the arbitrary and
capricious standard. Currently
the USDA screens less than 1 percent of the cattle slaughtered each year for
BSE, and this 1 percent is comprised of only downer cows-despite the fact that downers are already
supposedly banned from the food chain. Therefore, not a single piece of beef destined for human
consumption in the United States is tested for BSE. So while the judicial system continues to give deference to the USDA, I
will give deference to those who truly deserve it-my fellow farmers who raise meat I trust. Not meat
stamped with the USDA seal of approval.
---Off-Case---
Add-ons
Cali Ag
Meat production devastates California ag
McWilliams 14 (James McWilliams-professor of history at Texas State University, “Meat Makes the
Planet Thirsty”, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-planetthirsty.html?_r=0 ,MARCH 7, 2014)
AUSTIN, Tex. — CALIFORNIA is experiencing one of its worst droughts on record. Just two and a half years ago, Folsom
Lake, a major reservoir outside Sacramento, was at 83 percent capacity. Today it’s down to 36 percent. In January, there was no measurable
rain in downtown Los Angeles. Gov. Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency. President Obama has pledged $183 million in emergency
situation, despite last week’s deluge in Southern California, is dire . With California producing nearly half of
the fruit and vegetables grown in the United States, attention has naturally focused on the water
required to grow popular foods such as walnuts, broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes, strawberries, almonds and grapes. These crops are the
funding. The
ones that a recent report in the magazine Mother Jones highlighted as being unexpectedly water intensive. Who knew, for example, that it took
5.4 gallons to produce a head of broccoli, or 3.3 gallons to grow a single tomato? This information about the water footprint of food products
— that is, the amount of water required to produce them — is important to understand, especially for a state that dedicates about 80 percent
of its water to agriculture. [image omitted] But
for those truly interested in lowering their water footprint, those
numbers pale next to the water required to fatten livestock. A 2012 study in the journal Ecosystems by Mesfin M.
Mekonnen and Arjen Y. Hoekstra, both at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, tells an important story. Beef turns out to have
an overall water footprint of roughly four million gallons per ton produced. By contrast, the water footprint for
“sugar crops” like sugar beets is about 52,000 gallons per ton; for vegetables it’s 85,000 gallons per ton; and for starchy roots it’s about 102,200
gallons per ton. Factor
in the kind of water required to produce these foods, and the water situation looks
even worse for the future of animal agriculture in drought-stricken regions that use what’s known as
“blue water,” or water stored in lakes, rivers and aquifers, which California and much of the West
depend on. Vegetables use about 11,300 gallons per ton of blue water; starchy roots, about 4,200 gallons per ton; and fruit, about 38,800
gallons per ton. By comparison, pork consumes 121,000 gallons of blue water per ton of meat produced; beef, about 145,000 gallons per ton;
and butter, some 122,800 gallons per ton. There’s a reason other than the drought that Folsom Lake has dropped as precipitously as it has.
Don’t look at kale as the culprit. (Although some nuts, namely almonds, consume considerable blue water, even more than beef.) That said,
a
single plant is leading California’s water consumption. Unfortunately, it’s a plant that’s not generally cultivated for humans:
alfalfa. Grown on over a million acres in California, alfalfa sucks up more water than any other crop in the state. And it has
one primary destination: cattle. Increasingly popular grass-fed beef operations typically rely on alfalfa as
a supplement to pasture grass. Alfalfa hay is also an integral feed source for factory-farmed cows,
especially those involved in dairy production. If Californians were eating all the beef they produced, one might write off alfalfa’s water footprint
as the cost of nurturing local food systems. But that’s not what’s happening. Californians are sending their alfalfa, and thus their water, to Asia.
The reason is simple. It’s
more profitable to ship alfalfa hay from California to China than from the Imperial
Valley to the Central Valley. Alfalfa growers are now exporting some 100 billion gallons of water a year
from this drought-ridden region to the other side of the world in the form of alfalfa. All as more Asians are
embracing the American-style, meat-hungry diet. Further intensifying this ecological injustice are incidents such as the Rancho Feeding
Corporation’s recent recall of 8.7 million pounds of beef because the meat lacked a full federal inspection. That equals 631.6 million gallons of
water wasted by an industry with a far more complex and resource-intensive supply chain than the systems that move strawberries from farm
to fork. This comparison isn’t to suggest that produce isn’t occasionally recalled, but the Rancho incident reminds us that plants
aren’t
slaughtered, a process that demands 132 gallons of water per animal carcass, contributing even more to
livestock’s expanding water footprint. It’s understandable for concerned consumers to feel helpless in the face of these complex
industrial and global realities. But in the case of agriculture and drought, there’s a clear and accessible action
most citizens can take: reducing or, ideally, eliminating the consumption of animal products. Changing one’s
diet to replace 50 percent of animal products with edible plants like legumes, nuts and tubers results in a 30 percent reduction in an individual’s
food-related water footprint. Going vegetarian, a better option in many respects, reduces that water footprint by almost 60 percent.
Key to global food supply
Slezak 14 (Steven Slezay, “California drought threatens to destabilize agriculture markets”,
http://globalriskinsights.com/2014/02/25/california-drought-threatens-to-destabilize-agriculturemarkets/, February 25, 2014)
Food availability, affordability and quality drive food security problems in the world . The
drought in California threatens to exacerbate food security problems in all three issue areas. The state of
California is deep into the third year of a record drought. An excellent map from the University of Nebraska shows that nearly 91% of the state
is undergoing “severe to exceptional” drought. Seventeen communities scattered across the state are expected to run out of water by midMay. Last year was California’s driest since it became a state in 1850. This year looks to be the driest in over 400 years, according to
climatologists at the University of California Berkeley. Scientists say more is in store. Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory believes a 20-year drought cycle began in 2000. Scott Stine, a professor of environmental studies at Cal State East Bay, told the San
Jose Mercury News, “We
continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is
about seven years. We’re living in a dream world.” So what’s the big deal? As they say, this time it’s
different. The ongoing California drought provides a disturbing glimpse of future water shortages and
their impact on agricultural production and food security. California’s agricultural heartland is the
Central Valley,
a vast area comprising 22,500 square miles (58,000 square kilometers) of the world’s most productive agricultural land.
State-wide farm production was $44.7 billion in 2012, making California the largest agriculture producer in the US. The Central Valley
represents about 72% of this production. California is also the country’s largest agriculture exporter,
selling 39% of annual production overseas. The USDA estimates that the value of US agricultural exports
in 2011 was $136 billion, meaning California alone accounts for about 12% of all US farm exports. As a
result of the drought, Central Valley farms have left fallow 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares), roughly 8% of the region’s total. Agriculture
production is shifting from low margin fruit and produce such as cantaloupe to more profitable commodities like tree nuts and tomatoes. The
drought’s impact on overall agriculture production could amount to losses of $1.6 billion for farms and approach $5 billion for California
agribusiness in general. We’re from the government, and we’re here to help – if you’re a fish The political response has been predictable and
unhelpful. California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency in January to open taps of federal relief dollars. For the first time in
its 54-year history, the State Water Project will not provide any water to the 750,000 acres (300,000 hectares) of farmland it services. “The
nation’s largest state-built water and power development and conveyance system,” according to its website, will not convey resources
contracted by agriculture. Neither will the federal government’s Central Valley Project deliver agriculture water this year. Though the project
was, in its own words, “originally conceived…to protect the Central Valley from crippling water shortages,” it will not prevent water shortages
from crippling farms—with the possible loss of over 100,000 local jobs. Water destined to benefit endangered fish species, such as the Delta
Smelt (a short-lived, 6-cm long, reproduction-challenged member of the Osmeridae family), will remain at 100% allocation. Their population is
so low that the State of California says “it is exceptionally difficult to determine the actual number of Delta smelt.”
Food security
likely to be affected How all this is playing out in California is disturbing enough. But the
drought’s impact on food supplies will be felt far beyond the Golden State. The drought in
California threatens to exacerbate food supply shortages in other parts of the world as
higher US prices shift production and supply towards satisfying US demand. Supply shortfalls
will be met by higher prices, and markets are beginning to reflect this. Just one example: the February
2014 Live Cattle futures contract on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has appreciated 9.5% since midNovember. The possibility of global food price inflation cannot easily be dismissed. We can also expect to see
greater volumes of food being imported to the US this year, in response to higher prices. To the extent global supplies and production will
respond to American market price signals, food diverted for US buyers will not be available for consumption by others. In
the face of
growing global demand for food, higher prices and reduced supply do not bode well for the 842 million
people who already do not have enough to eat. Four million live in California, and a half million of them
reside in the Central Valley.
Food insecurity causes great power war
Brown, 9 (Lester R, - founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute “Can Food
Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” Scientific American, May)
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government
collapse. Those crises are brought on by ever worsening environmental degradation One of the toughest things
for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this
approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today's economic crisis. For most
of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to
think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire-and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed
to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos--and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too! For
many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The
combined
effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments
and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global
civilization. I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are
undermining the world food economy--most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising
temperatures--forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible. The Problem of Failed States Even a cursory look at the
vital signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental field are well into our
third decade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort to reverse a single one. In six of the past nine
years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world
carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response,
As demand for food rises faster than
supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on the governments of
countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets.
world grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.
Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008, the number of failing states was expanding [see sidebar at left]. Many of their
problem's stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. But if
the food situation continues to deteriorate,
entire nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In the 20th
century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict; today it is failing states. It is not
the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk. States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security,
food security and basic social services such as education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When
governments lose their monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that food
relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating conditions have already put such
Failing states are of international concern because they are a source of terrorists, drugs,
weapons and refugees, threatening political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing
programs in jeopardy.
states, has become a base for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world's leading
supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands of armed soldiers among
them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six).
Our global civilization depends on a
functioning network of politically healthy nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the
international monetary system, to control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for
controlling infectious diseases--such as polio, SARS or avian flu--breaks down, humanity will be in trouble. Once
states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states disintegrate, their fall will threaten the
stability of global civilization itself.
Food + Water scarcity
Reduction in meat consumption secures global food and water supplies
ScienceDaily 14 (“Eating less meat: Solution to reduce water use?”,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140804100107.htm, August 4, 2014)
Reducing the use of animal products can have a considerable impact on areas suffering
scarce water resources, as meat production requires more water than other agricultural products.
"Diet change together with other actions, such as reduction of food losses and waste, may tackle the future challenges of food security," states
researcher Mika Jalava from Aalto University. Growing population and climate change are likely to increase the pressure on already limited
water resources and diet
change has been suggested as one of the measures contributing to adequate food
security for growing population. The researchers assessed the impact of diet change on global water
resources over four scenarios, where the meat consumption was gradually reduced while diet recommendations in terms of energy supply,
proteins and fat were followed. The
study published in Environmental Research Letters is the first global-scale
analysis with a focus on changes in national diets and their impact on the blue and green water use
of food consumption . Food supply for growing population Global population is expected to exceed 9
billion by 2050, adding over 2 billion mouths to be fed to the current population, according to the UN. By
reducing the animal product contribution in the diet, global green water (rainwater) consumption decreases up to 21 % while for blue water
(irrigation water) the reductions would be up to 14 %. In other words,
by shifting to vegetarian diet we could secure
adequate food supply for an additional 1.8 billion people without increasing the use of water resources.
The potential savings are, however, distributed unevenly, and even more important, their potential alleviation on water scarcity varies widely
from country to country. Regional differences The
researchers at Aalto University found substantial regional
differences in diet change potential to reduce water use. In Latin America, Europe, Central and Eastern Asia, and SubSaharan Africa, diet change reduces mainly green water use. In Finland, for example, turning into a meat free diet would decrease the daily
green water use of a Finn over 530 litres but at the same time resulting nearly 50 litres increase in blue water use. In
the Middle East
region, North America, Australia and Oceania, also blue water use would decrease considerably. In South
and Southeast Asia, on the other hand, diet change does not result in savings in water use, as in these regions the diet is already largely based
on a minimal amount of products.
Water wars escalate
Barlow 8—National chairperson of The Council of Canadians. Co-founder of the Blue Planet Project. Chairs the board of Washington-based Food & Water
Watch and is also an executive member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization and a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future
Council. She is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates. Served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly (Maude,
The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, 25 February 2008,
http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_global_water_crisis_and_the_coming_battle_for_the_right_to_water)
The three water crises – dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control of water – pose the
greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the
water crises impose some life-or-death decisions on us all. Unless we collectively change our behavior, we are
heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater – between nations,
between rich and poor, between the public and the private interest, between rural and urban populations, and between the competing needs
of the natural world and industrialized humans. Water Is Becoming a Growing Source of Conflict Between Countries Around the world, more
that 215 major rivers and 300 groundwater basins and aquifers are shared by two or more countries, creating tensions over ownership and use
of the precious waters they contain. Growing shortages and unequal distribution of water are
causing disagreements, sometimes
violent, and becoming a security risk in many regions. Britain’s former defense secretary, John Reid, warns of coming “water wars.”
In a public statement on the eve of a 2006 summit on climate change, Reid predicted that violence and political conflict would become more
likely as watersheds turn to deserts, glaciers melt and water supplies are poisoned. He went so far as to say that the global water
crisis
was becoming a global security issue and that Britain’s armed forces should be prepared to tackle conflicts, including warfare, over
dwindling water sources. “Such changes make the emergence of violent conflict more, rather than less, likely,” former British
prime minister Tony Blair told The Independent. “The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory
factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur. We should see this as a warning sign.” The Independent gave several other examples of
potential conflict. These include Israel, Jordan and Palestine, who all rely on the Jordan River, which is controlled by
and Syria, where Turkish plans to build dams on the Euphrates River brought the country to the brink of war with Syria in
1998, and where Syria now accuses Turkey of deliberately meddling with its water supply; China and India, where the Brahmaputra River
has caused tension between the two countries in the past, and where China’s proposal to divert the river is re-igniting the divisions; Angola,
Botswana and Namibia, where disputes over the Okavango water basin that have flared in the past are now threatening to re-ignite as
Namibia is proposing to build a threehundred- kilometer pipeline that will drain the delta; Ethiopia and Egypt, where population growth
is threatening conflict along the Nile; and Bangladesh and India, where flooding in the Ganges caused by melting glaciers in the
regions of
Israel; Turkey
Himalayas is wreaking havoc in Bangladesh, leading to a rise in illegal, and unpopular, migration to India.
Food insecurity causes great power war
Brown, 9 (Lester R, - founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute “Can Food
Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” Scientific American, May)
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government
collapse. Those crises are brought on by ever worsening environmental degradation One of the toughest things
for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this
approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today's economic crisis. For most
of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to
think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire-and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed
to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos--and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too! For
many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The
combined
effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments
and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global
civilization. I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are
undermining the world food economy--most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising
temperatures--forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible. The Problem of Failed States Even a cursory look at the
vital signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental field are well into our
third decade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort to reverse a single one. In six of the past nine
years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world
carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response,
As demand for food rises faster than
supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on the governments of
countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets.
world grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.
Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008, the number of failing states was expanding [see sidebar at left]. Many of their
problem's stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. But if
the food situation continues to deteriorate,
entire nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In the 20th
century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict; today it is failing states. It is not
the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk. States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security,
food security and basic social services such as education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When
governments lose their monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that food
relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating conditions have already put such
Failing states are of international concern because they are a source of terrorists, drugs,
weapons and refugees, threatening political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing
programs in jeopardy.
states, has become a base for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world's leading
supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands of armed soldiers among
them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six).
Our global civilization depends on a
functioning network of politically healthy nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the
international monetary system, to control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for
controlling infectious diseases--such as polio, SARS or avian flu--breaks down, humanity will be in trouble. Once
states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states disintegrate, their fall will threaten the
stability of global civilization itself.
Warming
Beef production creates huge GHG emissions
McGrath 14 (Matt McGrath-Environment correspondent for BBC ,“Beef environment cost 10 times
that of other livestock”, http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28409704 , 21 July 2014)
A new study suggests that the production of beef is around 10 times more damaging to the
environment than any other form of livestock.
main US sources of protein. Beef
Scientists measured the environment inputs required to produce the
cattle need 28 times more land and 11 times more irrigation water than pork,
poultry, eggs or dairy. The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. While it has long been
known that beef has a greater environmental impact than other meats, the authors of this paper say theirs is is the first to quantify the scale in
a comparative way. Beef footprint The researchers developed a uniform methodology that they were able to apply to all five livestock
categories and to four measures of environmental performance. "We have a sharp view of the comparative impact that beef, pork, poultry,
dairy and eggs have in terms of land and water use, reactive nitrogen discharge, and greenhouse gas emissions," lead author Prof Gidon Eshel,
from Bard College in New York, told BBC News. "The uniformity and expansive scope is novel, unique, and important," he said. The scientists
used data from from 2000-2010 from the US department of agriculture to calculate the amount of resources required for all the feed consumed
by edible livestock. They then worked out the amount of hay, silage and concentrates such as soybeans required by the different species to put
on a kilo of weight. They
also include greenhouse gas emissions not just from the production of feed for
animals but from their digestion and manure. As ruminants, cattle can survive on a wide variety of
plants but they have a very low energy conversion efficiency from what they eat. As a result, beef comes
out clearly as the food animal with the biggest environmental impact. [image omitted] As well as the effects on land
and water, cattle release five times more greenhouse gas and consume six times more nitrogen than eggs or
poultry.
Cutting down on beef can have a big environmental impact they say. But the same is not true for
all livestock. "One can reasonably be an environmentally mindful eater, designing one's diet with its environmental impact in mind, while not
resorting to exclusive reliance on plant food sources," said Prof Eshel. "In fact, eliminating beef, and replacing it with relatively efficiency
animal-based alternatives such as eggs, can achieve an environmental improvement comparable to switching to plant food source." Other
researchers say the conclusions of the new study are applicable in Europe, even though the work is based on US data. "The overall
environmental footprint of beef is particularly large because it combines a low production efficiency
with very high volume," said Prof Mark Sutton, from the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. "The result is that the researchers
estimate that
over 60% of the environmental burden of livestock in the US results from beef. Although the
exact numbers will be different for Europe (expecting a larger role of dairy), the overall message will be similar: Cattle
dominate the
livestock footprint of both Europe and US."
extinction
Mazo 10 – PhD in Paleoclimatology from UCLA
Jeffrey Mazo, Managing Editor, Survival and Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science
Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, 3-2010, “Climate Conflict: How global
warming threatens security and what to do about it,” pg. 122
The best estimates for global warming to the end of the century range from 2.5-4.~C above preindustrial levels, depending on the scenario. Even in the best-case scenario, the low end of the likely
range is 1.goC, and in the worst 'business as usual' projections, which actual emissions have been
matching, the range of likely warming runs from 3.1--7.1°C. Even keeping emissions at constant 2000
levels (which have already been exceeded), global temperature would still be expected to reach
1.2°C (O'9""1.5°C)above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century." Without early and severe
reductions in emissions, the effects of climate change in the second half of the twenty-first
century are likely to be catastrophic for the stability and security of countries in the developing
world - not to mention the associated human tragedy. Climate change could even undermine the
strength and stability of emerging and advanced economies, beyond the knock-on effects on
security of widespread state failure and collapse in developing countries.' And although they have
been condemned as melodramatic and alarmist, many informed observers believe that unmitigated
climate change beyond the end of the century could pose an existential threat to civilisation."
What is certain is that there is no precedent in human experience for such rapid change or such
climatic conditions, and even in the best case adaptation to these extremes would mean profound
social, cultural and political changes.
Topicality
T
ADT is surveillance
USDA 2015 (February 15, “SA Monitoring and Surveillance”
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/wps/portal/banner/help?1dmy&urile=wcm%3Apath%3A/APHIS_Content_Li
brary/SA_Our_Focus/SA_Animal_Health/SA_Monitoring_And_Surveillance)
These programs conduct or contribute to animal health surveillance in the United States.
National Animal Health Surveillance System (NAHSS) - NAHSS integrates animal health monitoring and surveillance activities conducted by
many federal and state government agencies into a comprehensive and coordinated system.
US Status for reportable diseases as reported to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE)
National Animal Health Reporting System (NAHRS) - Information on the presence of reportable animal diseases in the United States.
National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) - National studies on animal health and health management practices of U.S. livestock and
poultry.
National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) - This network of state animal health laboratories provides, among other things,
laboratory data to meet epidemiological and disease reporting needs.
Animal Disease Traceability
National Poultry Improvement Program (NPIP) - National poultry health monitoring and surveillance.
National Aquaculture Program (NAP) - National aquaculture health monitoring and surveillance.
National Surveillance Unit - organization within APHIS tasked with coordinating activities related to animal health surveillance.
Census is surveillance – violates rights – leads to seizure –
Adams 13 (Mike Adams,-the Health Ranger and Editor of NaturalNews.com, “USDA agricultural census
program is a covert surveillance operation to compile government database of food and farm assets”,
http://www.naturalnews.com/039652_USDA_agriculture_census_government_surveillance.html#
,Wednesday, March 27, 2013)
(NaturalNews) The USDA "census of agriculture" is a government-run farm surveillance program designed to
register and inventory detailed private data on farm assets, operations and personnel. A census form is
mailed to each farmer in the United States, accompanied by threats of compliance and a warning that
farmers who do not comply will be visited in person by government agents.