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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.
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...
In the end, it's an argument against high-density monoculture, animal or vegetable, isn't it?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Right, a virus that attacks several species of ruminants is going to be controlled through raising different strains.
Brilliant!
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.
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
Why do all these horrible new viruses emerge from Germany?
Schadenfreude?
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
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)
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
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.
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
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.