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Scientists Say Spread of Schmallenberg Virus Is 'Warning To Europe'
redletterdave writes "The outbreak of a new livestock disease in western Europe last year, particularly harmful to offspring, could move further into areas surrounding the worst affected countries in the next cycle of new births, scientists say. The Schmallenberg virus — named after the German town where it was first detected in November — infected sheep and cows on at least 2,600 farms in eight EU countries last year, most likely between August and October. Thought to have been spread for hundreds of miles across Europe by biting midges and warm late summer winds, the virus has since been confirmed in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Spain and Britain. 'It is certainly a warning for the whole world in the sense that, unfortunately, new threats may emerge,' said Alberto Laddomada, a former virologist who heads the animal health unit at the European Commission. 'This virus has spread very, very quickly in the European Union amongst an animal population of many millions.'"
Luckily there's never any human illness or casualties from contagion on crops, nor strains of fungus, mold, or insects that desimate farmlands...
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
For the lazy, the wikipedia entry on the virus. While it can spread easily, it sounds like the virus has a short life span and there is a vacine already developed for it.
Though, it can have some nasty effects on pregnant farm animals, it seems unclear (at least to me), if animals that were effected in the past then get pregnant afterwards still have birthing issues.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Am I the only one who read it as "biting midgets" at first?
The spreading of viruses among vegetables seems like the most dangerous motivator to reduce vegetable agriculture. The subjective pro of "fruits/vegetables/etc. tastes good" is beginning to look weaker and weaker against the many cons.
Great! Looks like the only option is to become a mineralivore...
Maybe we should stop monocropping the world.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
In the end, it's an argument against high-density monoculture, animal or vegetable, isn't it?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
WTF does it have to do with global warming?
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
It is true that direct transmission of novel pathogens to humans is more likely to happen from animals than from plants; but starvation will kill you every bit as readily as contagion will, so the plant-farmers aren't exactly safe...
Good. The world could really use a LOT less humans.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Not in this case. This virus attacks quite broadly, affecting ruminants in general.
It expands the range of vectors that never used to be present in those parts of Europe. For the same reason, expect "tropical" diseases to expand their ranges, as the insects that transmit them move towards newly-warm regions.
Schmallenberg Virus, uuuh, Schmallenberg Virus?
For contagions: No. They do not evolve in livestock to directly attack humans any more so than they do from plants. They evolve in their host and can be transmissible, and this is just as true from plants as it is from livestock.
For the non-transmissible diseases/insects : You wont give a shit about the direct danger posed by them if they indirectly cause your starvation.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Possibly, yes. I happen to be a biochemist, but I haven't looked into the details of this particular case. Just felt the need to quip about the vegetarian/non-vegetarian bullcrap up there, sorry...
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Oh, please, wise anonymous. Educate me about the glories of an imperialistic, consumer-based world.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Why do all these horrible new viruses emerge from Germany?
>/dev/null 2>&1
Please. I really wish you well in your endeavors to reduce human population.
Now that the knowledge of the solution has been passed on by you to others. You can now start on the actual reduction.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
For contagions: No. They do not evolve in livestock to directly attack humans any more so than they do from plants. They evolve in their host and can be transmissible, and this is just as true from plants as it is from livestock.
Influenza viruses frequently fester in livestock, jump to humans and then spread throughout the world.
. . .so the plant-farmers aren't exactly safe...
Of course they aren't exactly safe. The questions are which is safer, and by how much?
I'm pretty sure that it's an argument in favor of assembling an international team of oddballs and hard-cases who have what it takes to do what needs to be done, against a background of entertaining interpersonal drama... Ideally, each one's backstory should be connected to broad stereotypes about their country of origin and somehow involve a hackneyed reason for their involvement in agricultural pathology. Of course, they should also be brooding and haunted, or hot, or both.
I'm thinking a fiery Irish redhead attracted to the study of plant pathogens by a desire to see that a famine of the likes that claimed her ancestors is never repeated; along with a technocratic, but nerdy and mild-mannered, Japanese chemical engineer with a boundless confidence in our ability to outwit emerging pathogens. An apparently shallow and hard-partying Aussie vet(whose sensitive core can be shown during close-camera scenes of his delicate work to save adorable furry animals) rounds out the team's zoonotic expertise, along with a fatalistic epidemiologist(suggestions for an appropriate national stereotype welcome). Finally, there would be a 'native' around to provide the folksy wisdom of the traditional small farmers, from some country and backstory that makes this culturally-aware, rather than racist; and an American who started out studying agricultural chemistry under Borlaug; but left to serve with the Chemical Corps in Vietnam.
It wouldn't actually, y'known, solve any problems; but the made-for-TV spinoff would be a hit!
starvation will kill you every bit as readily as contagion will
If you live in a agricultural monoculture. Think of the Irish potato blight. Something that hits rice hard, would be rough on Asia.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It's the only way to keep yourself protected.
It's funny now; but it won't be when your continued enrollment in Monsanto Genuine Advantage is your only hope for agriculture!
You don't understand a damn thing about monocropping. It is the difference between using inbred lines that are all susceptible to the same pandemic disease versus landrace varieties that provide buffers that can potentially stop an outbreak because -- gasp -- differing genetics differ in whether diseases may spread (and, consequently, mutate and spread onward) in them easily or not.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
I'd say that not be wholly reliant on one thing would increase your overall odds. Wouldnt you?
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
That's crazy talk, good sir. Human behavior can't possibly have consequences on the natural world!
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
No more so than in wildlife. Nature changes. The alternative to that is far less appealing.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Probably safest not to bite any midges OR hobbits.
It would solve the problem of what to do with all the European odd-balls (we're running a surplus).
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
starvation will kill you every bit as readily as contagion will
If you live in a agricultural monoculture. Think of the Irish potato blight. Something that hits rice hard, would be rough on Asia.
As a fungus in good standing, I would like to suggest that "Ug99", which cuts through wheat like nobody's business, could also ruin some days...
And unless you ensure that you dont have like breeds/strains/etc being grown/raised contigiously AT A COUNTY OR STATE LEVEL you cannot assist in that containment. You have to have a calculated and agreed upon mechanism whereby every farmer in very large reqions ensure that they arent raising/growing any breed that their neighbors are so that a spread of disease has no vehicle to pass over large areas.
I farm and raise horses. I do have a little bit of a clue about it. I cant get my neighbors to agree on whose turn it is to level the farm roads, let alone agree on what crops we're each going to raise.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Are you suggesting an Existentialist Frenchman as the epidemiologist? He could drink more heavily than is good for him, and mix statistical deduction with Camus quotations...
That would be the people who don't eat meat simply because they don't like it. Yes, they exist. I've once met one.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You forgot to include me, as the nihilistic German biochemist-gone-patent-engineer getting dragged back into his original field, ranting at everyone else in a throaty, consonant heavy voice about evolution taking its course. I'd even offer the sacrifice of slowly, oh so slowly getting convinced by the Irish redhead that, actually, we should do something about it instead of just letting the weak perish. Just for the dramatic effect, mind you.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Ergot?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That's crazy talk, good sir. Human behavior can't possibly have consequences on the natural world!
Yeah, that's why it is completely safe to make fire in the forest. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Vaccines, patches, same thing right?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Here's the beauty: you don't need to. Eliminate the Monsantos and corn subsidies of the world and monocropping disappears. You don't need "calculated entropy" to reduce the dangers we're putting ourselves in now. You remove the backwards thinking and suddenly people stop trying to producing the same damn thing. It's beyond ridiculous that local heirloom varieties are disused when you realize how much effort it takes to customize the right environment for the /wrong/ variety. Indigenous plants got us to the point of civilization. We never needed inbred lines, but we went down that path, and now we suffer.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Good thing wheat and the grain industry in general are completely unnecessary for human subsistence.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
It is - and in fact that's the *real* argument against GMOs, as well.
I'm skeptical about large-scale use of GMOs, but I'm so sick of people thinking they are going to somehow kill us all with their genetic cooties. The problem is spreading (accidentally or intentionally) these engineered genes throughout an entire species without understanding their long-term effects on said species itself. If human start dying from GMOs it's going to be from a massive famine after we have managed to kill off a couple of staple crops worldwide...
Probably not, and I did not read all comments to see, but man... I need to get my eyes checked.
You are confusing 2 terms. Monoculture is not the same as monocropping. Monoculture is growing the same crop over a given area of land. Monocropping is doing that without rotating the crop year to year.
A single given plot of land can avoid both of these problems by planting several crops and rotating among your own land. In fact, big surprise, that's how subsistence farming used to work for a long time before corporate megafarming started planting the same crops (rotated or not) on vast expanses of land. Native Americans had known this was a good idea in a thousand years ago (see "three sisters").
That's very true. Corn is completely needless.
With this in mind, human subsistence can be attained just by almost anything else, and it doesn't matter if you make your diet based on anything else, because a loss of supply, be it a factory shut down if you live on twinkies (okay, silly example) or a crop blight if you live on corn, unnecessary in a diet as it is, still means famine and starvation. By extension, rice isn't necessary for human subsistence, but if you're subsisting on rice, losing it is going to leave you starving it, and the same applies to corn.
along with a fatalistic epidemiologist(suggestions for an appropriate national stereotype welcome).
Russian. Definitely Russian -- in certain sciences (and mathematics, too) it's become almost stereotypical, thanks to huge influx that occurred following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
No. How do you raise your animals if there are no plants? In the end, aren't all food sources dependent on plants?
Learn to love Alaska
"The pandemic could be catastrophic."
We have billions of humans, which literally means we can afford to lose, as a species,, a few billion of those.
Not that it wouldn't suck to be a casualty, but Nature is robust and designed to replace losses.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Yes, but he has to have a Mandelbrot Set on a t-shirt or on the back of his jacket.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Uh, did you ever take a biology class, or did the man infiltrate those? Because I don't know if you've read/seen much NatGeo or Discovery, but this world is awesome as it is ready to kill you, and dying of awful disease born of unprocessed and unsterilized and improperly handled food was quite the common thing before the advent of sanitary processes. Dysentery isn't just something that makes your characters on Oregon Trail disappear.
Unless, of course, you are indirectly suggesting that the solution to this problem is a human die-back. That would indeed reduce the need.
The subjective pro of "meat/cheese/etc. tastes good" is beginning to look weaker and weaker against the many cons.
No. Nope. Bacon, cheese, steak, pizza etc are still fucking delicious no matter what goes on before it's on my plate.
Now, when we get in vitro meat, maybe that will make this natural cheeseburger look hideous by comparison, but in the meantime... (nom nom nom nom)
Still in trouble if it's a 0-day virus (no available patch/vaccine).
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Eliminate the Monsantos and corn subsidies of the world and monocropping disappears.
That's a much taller order than what Feyshtey was suggesting, given public apathy. Which is sickening, but lets be honest: the only way monsanto and corn subsidies are going to be "eliminated" is if a catastrophe with monoculture actually happens, and people care enough to override monsanto and corn farmers' lobbying efforts.
In other words, the only way to prevent such problems before they occur on a wide scale is to do calculated entropy.
Isn't it obvious ? You are what you eat. Go raw! Plants, vegetables & fruit don't catch viruses. Unprocessed raw food is the Nature's Solution. The Cows eat it when they live in a natural environment, why couldn't we ?
They don't? What about plant viruses? You're not suggesting a solution, you're suggesting we delay the problem by switching to an all plant diet. What happens when we face the same problems with plants, like what happened with the potato famine? Clearly we must both control consumption, eliminate waste, and control population growth through family planning. Making everyone vegetarians (or vegans as you seem to suggest) won't magically solve the problem, it will just delay the problem until we have an even more massive world population, where one bad harvest results in massive starvation.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
But with every tasty bite of Beef, Chicken,Pork,Turkey,Moose (best tasting meat in the world),Caribou,Grizzly,Black,Brown bears, Mt. Goat,Elk,Deer,Antelope,Salmon,etc., I consume screams that I am right and you are wrong. Kind of hard to eat a nice selection of vegies up in Alaska without paying for the importation of them from the lower 48. Now Moose are every where, including my dinner tonight and I am now in Texas...
"Remember, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."
So what you are saying is, you want us to be vegetables instead?
Or fruits?
Fruity vegetables?
You are what you eat, stop living off nuts.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Good we need the human race to die
Blame Global Warming
Blame Capitalism
Blame Monsanto
Meat is Murder
I believe both of you are using different, but correct, definitions for the term monocropping. Monocropping does not always mean inbreeding. Monocropping also refers to growing the same species, even if they are not genetically singular. By this definition, monocropping has both drawbacks and benefits. The disease susceptibility is not nearly as high as using genetically identical cultivars.
MKULTRA?
Personally I think the true impact of such a series would be improved if they followed my complete mis-reading of the summary:
spread for hundreds of miles across Europe by biting midgeTs
Now THAT's a story I'd watch :-)
of Beef, Chicken,Pork,Turkey,Moose (best tasting meat in the world),Caribou,Grizzly,Black,Brown bears, Mt. Goat,Elk,Deer,Antelope,Salmon,
<MontyPythonQuote>
And the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths, and carp and anchovies, and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit-bats and large chu...
</MontyPythonQuote>
Sorry, a long day...
I'm sure it will be used as an argument against high density and/or monoculture. Not necessarily a good argument though. No matter what your agricultural practices may be there will be pests and pathogens. Crop rotation and a variety of species or breeds are two of many tools used to minimize the threat.
Don't feed the troll cow and pig meat.
lower 48? My veggies come from the Philippines and South America, where all good Americans get their veggies from.
Learn to love Alaska
Indigenous plants have not gotten us to this point in civilization. Domesticated crops which are the result of 5000 years of plant husbandry got us here.
For example maize and squash dominated the Eastern North America Agricultural complex 1000 years before Europeans arrived. Neither crop was indigenous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(2008_TV_series)
Aye. Looking at the "biodiversity" that is left in soy bean cultures is scary. And we are heading in the same direction regarding staple crops for human consumption.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Rubber spoon rubber spoon...
I am John Hurt.
Which is why you need to become a mushroomian. It's good for the environment, and okay for you!
I am John Hurt.
We're tried that, it hasn't helped. Countless wars has bred a human race that is genetically inferior and more aggressive.
I am John Hurt.
Far more because there's far more interaction between humans and livestock then human and wildlife.
Why was I modded off-topic? Apparently the person has no notion of the fact that people continually demand antibiotics for *viral* infections.
Mmmm Soylent Green...........