Animal epidemics that might cause famine

My last post was about EcoHealth offering to fund a lab here in the Philippines: Not to help us with animal diseases that affect the local food supply, of course, but to do research on diseases in wildlife that could become epidemic in the future.

Hello: We need to to diagnose and treat diseases such as bird flu or African Swine Flu or Blue ear disease in pigs. You know, for ten years, we didn't eat beef (or waterbufflo beef) but with the local small farmers losing their pigs, and now bird flu affecting the chicken farm, we eat beef two or three times a week.

Yes, we eat fish once or twice a day: usually local freshwater fish from fish farms or small ponds where they can be grown. Ironically the fish in the sea is all around us, but China is busy overfishing all around us, and destroying the ecology in the West Philippine sea while harassing Filipino fishermen from their traditional fishing grounds. 

But never mind: Usually the China friendly US MSM ignores this, and when they do notice Chinese aggression they write it up in a neutral way, as if those dangerous fishermen are attacking China who just had to defend themselves. LINK LINK.

We are farmers, and going broke thanks to the high price of diesel and fertilizer, made worse by US policies that shut down fracking and pipelines and excess regulations that affect making fertilizer at a time when the Ukraine/Russian supplies are unavailable.

But regular animal epidemics are affecting our food supply,, from African swine flu to bird flu and the worry that Foot and mouth disease that is spreading in Indonesia will spread to the Philippines.

 The History guy has a talk about animal flu: When horses were made sick and how that affected society. 

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the HistoryGuy points out how sick horses caused problems in transportation, and that the morality of animals was low.

But Foot and Mouth disease epidemics are more serious: 

This article is about foot and mouth disease epidemics in the Philippines, the last major outbreak was in 1995, and they actually screened you in the airport and disinfected the bottom of your shoes before going on an airplane.

But this was not the first epidemic:

FMD was first documented in Manila in 1902 from cattle imported in Hong Kong. It was not until 1908 however, that the first epidemic occurred when a shipment of infected cattle from Hong Kong arrived in Manila, spreading the disease to 25 provinces. From then on until prior to World War II, the disease was recorded almost every year, but only in ruminants

the article goes on to note later epidemics affected other animals.

And here in the Philippines, the death of the waterbuffalo from the epidemic in the early 1900s made it difficult to plant rice and led to famine.

This could happen again, since many farmers still use the waterbuffalo to grow rice.

Luckily, in our area, over the past 15 years, water buffalos have slowly been replaced by a large rototiller called a hand plow, (which uses diesel...uh oh: Diesel is now increasing in price... Sigh).

this Australian newspaper article from last year notes how importing meat from contaminated animals could lead to epidemics of not only FMD but also African swine flu (which is how it was spread to Luzon from China two years ago). 

So far, no FMD here, but you see the problem: famine is coming and we could go bankrupt from the high price of growing rice, while the poor will just become malnourished because they can't afford a decent diet.

Sigh.