By Scott Cooney, M.S., M.B.A.
The Health Department is taking all the necessary steps in case the swine flu virus develops into a full-blown pandemic. Will American agribusinesses, who moved their swine operations to Mexico to avoid higher labor costs and environmental standards here in the U.S., have to pay the bill? My guess would be no. My guess is that they'll use the economic convenience of externalities to dismiss their responsibility. Here, I argue that as long as we continue to subsidize concentrated animal feedlot operations (CAFO's) not just directly (which we do in a very real and substantial sense), but indirectly, as in this case, we cannot hope for a sustainable agriculture system.
Externalities are the economic costs of an operation that do not show up on the bottom line of the company or country that produces them. In other words, a company that produces widgets has costs like the material required to produce a widget, the labor, and the electricity needed. But the widget itself also produces waste at the end of its life because it needs to be disposed of. This is a classic externality: a cost of doing business that is not borne by the business itself, but rather externalized and borne by others. Pollution is a classic example of an externality. Companies are allowed to pollute the air and the water at a cost much higher than they directly pay.
The externalities of a business like a CAFO include the air and water pollution, public health problems associated not just with their industrial waste but also in antibiotic resistance, obesity caused by meats laden with chemicals and grown in conditions that produce weight in the fastest manner possible, and other health problems arising from their unhealthy products. And, of course,
creating an environment in which disease like the swine flu can flourish, mutate, and multiply. ...
-- CLICK HERE to Continue Reading and Comment
