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Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Influenza, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science

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The first collection to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics, and the nature of science together



Thanks to breakthroughs in production and food science, agribusiness has been able to devise new ways to grow more food and get it more places more quickly. There is no shortage of news items on hundreds of thousands of hybrid poultry--each animal genetically identical to the next--packed together in megabarns, grown out in a matter of months, then slaughtered, processed and shipped to the other side of the globe. Less well known are the deadly pathogens mutating in, and emerging out of, these specialized agro-environments. In fact, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to such food systems, among them Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants.

Agribusiness has known for decades that packing thousands of birds or livestock together results in a monoculture that selects for such disease. But market economics doesn't punish the companies for growing Big Flu--it punishes animals, the environment, consumers, and contract farmers. Alongside growing profits, diseases are permitted to emerge, evolve, and spread with little check. "That is," writes evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, "it pays to produce a pathogen that could kill a billion people."

In Big Farms Make Big Flu, a collection of dispatches by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations. Wallace details, with a precise and radical wit, the latest in the science of agricultural epidemiology, while at the same time juxtaposing ghastly phenomena such as attempts at producing featherless chickens, microbial time travel, and neoliberal Ebola. Wallace also offers sensible alternatives to lethal agribusiness. Some, such as farming cooperatives, integrated pathogen management, and mixed crop-livestock systems, are already in practice off the agribusiness grid.

While many books cover facets of food or outbreaks, Wallace's collection appears the first to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics and the nature of science together. Big Farms Make Big Flu integrates the political economies of disease and science to derive a new understanding of the evolution of infections. Highly capitalized agriculture may be farming pathogens as much as chickens or corn.

400 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2016

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Rob Wallace

11 books17 followers

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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
Profile Image for Nabilah.
274 reviews50 followers
March 18, 2020
Basically the author argues that the way the agriculture industry sets up make endemics, pandemics and all of that would happen in increasing frequency and intensity but because capitalism sucks and the industry definitely would not let the appropriate authorities regulate them, we couldn't really fight this from not happening.

It's a good book but it has lots of scientific terms because the author is an expert in his field and he is not a journalist. He knows his things well so this is why it is a good book.
Profile Image for David Anderson.
235 reviews54 followers
April 29, 2020
Rob Wallace’s 2016 book, Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science in many ways should have served as a forewarning for the current coronavirus outbreak. The emergence and evolution of influenza and other pathogen pandemics is clearly intertwined with neoliberal economic practices that put surplus value over use value. Agribusiness has grown into a fully globalized industrial complex. The ever-growing turnover rates are detrimental to animal health. The few weeks animals live before they are slaughtered provide favorable conditions for viruses that are highly pathogenic and very effective within very short time spans. Natural immunity cannot be developed within the industrially bred and reared livestock. From those industrial farms, disease is exported throughout the world via the routes of globally connected corporations and trade networks. In the case of avian influenza, and against the received wisdom of governmental reports, wild migratory birds have little to do with it and are, if at all, the victims of industrially produced and disseminated viruses. If we are to understand the emergence, evolution, and spread of novel influenzas, we need to develop “more-than-local and nonlinear approaches to the empirical study of human-environment processes” (p.314). We must further acknowledge the responsibility of agribusiness, science, and the industrial mass production of meat, so far abiding only to the rules of global capitalism. Absolutely essential reading; 5 stars.

Check out this recent Guardian article, "Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...
Profile Image for Martin Empson.
Author 19 books168 followers
July 27, 2016
The media is a fickle beast, so coverage of potential epidemics of diseases veers between the apocalyptic to nonexistence. As an outbreak occurs we hear about the potential terrifying consequences of the disease, combined with graphic details of the symptoms and frequently pictures of large numbers of dead animals.

Rob Wallace's new book is an important polemic that argues that we, as a society, should be a lot more concerned about the potential for disease to decimate the human population. It is very much a question of not if, but when. Wallace's work is important because it argues that the key problem is not inadequate science, nor ineffectual medicine (though at times these may be issues) but an approach to the question which fails to see the systematic way that capitalism has transformed our relationship to the wider eco-system in ways that encourage the spread, mutation and virulence of disease.

Full review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/...
50 reviews
July 30, 2024
Big farms do be making big flu. Super interesting stufffffz

The science terminology and lack of direction hurt me a little bit so I did some skipping hence the 3. But important concept to get my head around. Would recommend. But maybe you can just read an article or something like this.
Profile Image for Paula.
21 reviews1 follower
August 2, 2021
Imprescindible, aunque técnico, para entender y visualizar como los circuitos del capital y el mercado tienen un papel clave en la diseminación y generación de brotes epidémicos
Profile Image for Zack.
321 reviews5 followers
Read
November 11, 2023
Very good book, though flawed in some ways. He's serious scientifically, but politics aren't great, a bit eclectic with some third worldism, some references to Trotsky, etc. I think he may have got the emphasis a little wrong.

See also, by the same author, https://bit.ly/dead-e

Wider readings on the same topic https://workersliberty.org/pandemics-...

Wider readings on a related topic https://workersliberty.org/animals-en...

Of which, on the bottom bullet point on the page, there are links to a debate about some of these questions.

On the emphasis, I guess you could say capitalism drives a few things which can contribute to more epidemics. Ecologically:
1) Direct ecological destruction, and land use change, putting humans in touch with more species for zoonotic transfer, such as in deforestation.
2) Climate change, making species move around in a more indirect way, etc.
3) Wildlife trade, bringing humans in contact to species which have had wider contact with the environment, moving the species around, concentrating them, etc.
4) Industrial farming, which act as an incubator of diseases, by bringing huge numbers of individual animals together in concentration, in a way which suppresses their immune protective abilities, selects for virulance, and the like. And then transports them all over the place. This includes overuse of antibiotics etc.

Socially:
5) poverty, inequality, squalour, limited access to healthcare, etc. contribute to ill health and susceptability,

Some socially positive things overall which probably contribute, in some way:
6) A lot of international travel and concentrations of people, people take pathogens all over and mix. This is an otherwise mostly progressive thing: although international flying has ecological costs.
7) Urbanisation: Cities are in many ways are ecologically and socially better than people being spread out more. But more people, more densely together and mixing more, exacerbates epidemic spread.
8) Medicine, which must be celebrated, and which keeps people alive who might have otherwise died. Medicine overall surely has helped reduce epidemics, and their impact: through vaccines and treatment, sanitation etc. Some positive results of medicine may in some ways facilitate further epidemics. There is a greater proportion immunosuppressed individuals, for various important medical reasons, and they can play a role for example in recombination, though I'm not sure how significant this is I'm not sure. Some of the far-right and herd immunity talk builds upon this rhetoric in a horrific ablist way. Certainly there's no political lessons we can really take from this, other than pointing out how awful the logical conclusions of people who advocate a simplistic "natural" or "herd immunity" response is.

Rob Wallace's emphasis is more on the ecological things, 1-4, and in particular 1 and 4. They all do certainly play a role, but I suspect that the emphasis between 3 and 4 is more towards the 3 than Rob Wallace has it. Although a hard and fast distinction between the two is a bit more complex in reality. We would certainly tackle 5, as well as 1-4, but I suspect 6-8 would remain similar under socialism; or even would become bigger factors.

I've probably missed the boat for a proper review. But some disorganised extracts and notes, originally just for myself. In two places, I need to merge them (a lot of duplication!) and paste below, but I'll do that another time (you may be better just to read the book!):

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/p507s8...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F...
303 reviews24 followers
September 14, 2020
Did not bother to finish. Very disappointed. I am an amateur epidemiologist specializing in emerging infectious diseases. This book is a series of essays and talks. One of them would have sufficed.
Profile Image for Max.
Author 5 books103 followers
September 18, 2021
I feel like ive never gotten more from a book so far over my head. Insane ratio of "written for an audience with more relevant specialized knowledge than me" to usefulness. awesome
34 reviews1 follower
March 5, 2021
Big Farms Make Big Flu handlar om nett det – store gardar fører til ålvorlege influensautbrot. Dette kastar Rob Wallace ljos over via ei samling av notat, merknadar og artiklar. Nokre av tekstane er lettlesne, medan andre er vitskaplege artiklar. Sjølv likte eg denne kombinasjonen, men meiner det vart litt mykje tyngre tekstar mot slutten av boka.

Sidan det er ei samling tekstar, er det mange av ideane som kjem opp mange gongar. Dei kjem gjerne opp i litt ulik form, og soleis kastar dei ulike tekstane ljos over ideane frå litt ulike kantar. Nokre hadde kanskje føretrukke ein meir disiplinert framstilling av éin og éin idé, men metoden fungerer.

Hovudtesen i boka er at dagens internasjonale landbrukssystem fører til fårlege sjukdomar. Slik eg forstår det, ligg den norske modellen litt på sida av dette internasjonale systemet.

Store grise- og kyllinghus med genetisk svært like dyr, gjev patogen eit miljø kor det er lett å spreia seg og kor det ikkje er noka stor ulempe å vera døydeleg. Desse store produksjonsbyggningane er ofte kontrollert av store, internasjonale matkonsern. Sidan konserna er internasjonale (eller berre kontrollerer husdyrbruk i ulike landsdelar), kan dei tola og til og med tena på eit utbrot på éin stad: Eit lokalt utbrot får lokale konsekvensar, og kan difor utradera lokale bønder. Sidan kan konserna koma attende og auka marknadsdelen sin.
I mindre husdyrhus, eller i eit hus med meir ulike dyr, hadde sjukdomen hatt vanskelegare for å utvikla seg. Med færre dyr vert det ein større ulempe å drepa vertane sine, og med meir ulike dyr vil dei ulike immunforsvara kunna hindra ein patogen å spreia seg vilt. Soleis vert dei lokale bøndene hardast råka, trass i at det ikkje er deira landbruk som dyrkar fram patogena.

Eit anna poeng er at når landbruket byggjer ned villmark, so vil me få fleire patogen frå villmarka og inn i samfunnet. Dette kan vera fordi menneske kjem inn i villmarka der sjukdomen er, eller fordi dyr får nye forflyttingsmønster når dei gamle, villmarksområde dei budde i forsvinn.

Eit tredje poeng er at meir og raskare forflytting globalt, både av folk og dyr, tillet patogen å flytta seg fortare frå stad til stad og land til land. Eit koronavirus som kunne ha dukka opp og brunne ut i ein landsby, vert i staden ein global pandemi av di me flytter masse folk heile tida.

Mykje av dei teoretiske råmeverka heng kan me forstå ved å lesa Levins og Lewontnins oppsummering av dialektisk metode i biologien. Rob Wallace er med å bera vidare denne tradisjonen, og det tykkjer eg er bra.

Alt i alt er det ei god bok som fleire burde lesa og som er bør melda grundigare. Vonleg finn nokon på å omsetja henne til norsk òg.
Profile Image for Alberto Vizcaíno López.
Author 3 books12 followers
April 4, 2021
El libro “Grandes granjas, grandes gripes. Agroindustria y enfermedades infecciosas” de Rob Wallace explica la relación entre el sistema industrializado de producción de alimentos y el creciente riesgo de aparición de pandemias. En particular su lectura sirve para entender por qué no es necesario buscar argumentos conspiranoicos al origen del virus Sars-Cov-2, encontrar ejemplos de crisis que, sin llegar a la magnitud de la causada por la propagación de la COVID-19, se vienen repitiendo en las últimas décadas y comprender que, o cambiamos algunas cosas en nuestro modelo de producción y consumo o esta no será la última pandemia que viviremos.

El ensayo, dividido en siete bloques, aborda el problema desde varios puntos de vista, explicando cómo se han abordado las crisis causadas por la gripe aviar o los patógenos de la industria porcina, trata la evolución de los virus que afectan a los animales que criamos para alimentación, la influencia de las prácticas industriales en la selección de variantes de esos virus, el papel de los fármacos o la influencia del manejo de los ecosistemas naturales en la aparición y propagación de virus cada vez más peligrosos para la especie humana, como el Ébola.

Una de las ideas que se desarrollan es la importancia de identificar la ubicación de las variedades de los virus. Iría más allá de determinar el lugar donde el patógeno se originó. Para Wallace la evolución de los virus depende de las condiciones locales impuestas por las políticas públicas y las prácticas sociales. Según plantea en el libro, el origen de los patógenos es multifacético y hay numerosos países e industrias culpables. Tanto por sus prácticas agrícolas y ganaderas como por el tipo de alimentos y la demanda de los mismos que imponen a los productores.

Rob Wallace plantea que debemos acabar con la agroindustria tal y como la conocemos. Para el autor, por ejemplo, la gripe aviar surge a través de una red globalizada de producción y comercio avícola en la que evolucionan cepas específicas del monocultivo genético de aves. Mientras que los virus son capaces de adaptarse a los ritmos de la producción industrial, los animales seleccionados por características que interesan al mercado pierden la opción de crear resistencia a las nuevas variedades de virus o de trasladar adaptaciones genéticas a las siguientes generaciones.

Reseña completa en mi blog
Profile Image for Mari Valentí.
45 reviews1 follower
March 5, 2022
Se me ha hecho un poco pesado, ya que es una recopilación de artículos y charlas escritas para publicaciones científicas y usa un vocabulario muy específico y complicado para los profanos. Pero deja MUY clara que la cría intensiva de animales para la alimentación humana deriva en desastres ecológicos y epidemiológicos. La COVID es la pandemia que se anuncia a lo largo del libro y si no cambiamos el sistema de producción no será la última ni la más letal.
Profile Image for Erset.
179 reviews22 followers
May 1, 2024
Ufff tremendo libro. El autor es biólogo evolutivo y filogeografo, así que usa una terminología en parte desconocida para mí. No obstante, es un libro muy interesante, que ofrece una diversidad de datos muy relevante en el tema de agroindustria y su íntima relación con las sucesivas pandemias y epidemias causadas por el mal manejo de la ganadería industrial.

Una chulada de libro que merece la pena ser leído y releído.
Profile Image for Matt.
30 reviews5 followers
April 8, 2022
Wallace’s book contains a lot of great information and insight, but the bulk of it was in desperate need of editing. The text is full of comma splices, sentence fragments, and awkward constructs. It was also very redundant, since it mostly consisted of compiled blog posts and various speeches.
Profile Image for Rachel.
16 reviews3 followers
September 12, 2020
Very important book to understand what is happening in the world today. Its about the flu virus, but much is relevant in terms of the corona virus as well.
Profile Image for Palomillasalvaje.
137 reviews3 followers
May 23, 2021
Me ha ayudado a entender muchas cosas, de las que, por desconocimiento, dudaba o pretendía ignorar.
Mucha información, alguna muy técnica, pero de lectura agradable, en general.
Profile Image for Maria Srour.
73 reviews8 followers
December 15, 2021
Relatively interesting but exhausting to read. The points could’ve been made in half the pages. Rob Wallace could benefit from anger management (or maybe this is his version of it?).
1 review
January 4, 2025
Es un buen libro, sin duda. El trabajo de Rob Wallace es excelente en lo que respecta, en muchos casos, a encontrar una relación entre ecología, zoonosis y el nexo Estado-corporaciones. Sin embargo, a quien quiera entender las ideas fundamentales detrás de su propuesta, le invito mejor a leer alguna de sus entrevistas post-2020, ya que el libro se hace a veces un tanto repetitivo si no buscas entrar en exceso en los detalles y buscas más bien entender su tesis principal.
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