Unhygienic – or just small-scale? (long version)

Another serious consideration is that our indigenous microbiota protect us in different ways against potential pathogens. Thus, the elimination of the natural microbiota following the pasteurisation of milk creates a sterile and hence a highly hygienic medium that could not be more vulnerable to colonisation by a potential pathogen. Raw milk on the other hand harbours a large number of different micro-organisms providing only a small niche for the potential pathogenic invader to occupy, as do the various ecosystems that are internal to the human organism such as that of the mouth or the gut.

But there is growing evidence that resident microbes protect us more actively than that. Garry Hamilton regards them as providing “the body’s first line of defence”. One way of achieving this is by manufacturing and releasing molecules that appear “to inhibit the growth of potentially troublesome microbes“. [48] Thus, Streptococci bacteria living the mouth inhibit the growth of Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause pneumonia, and Streptococcus pylogenes, the instigator of ‘strep throat’. [49]

According to Hamilton, resident germs can bring the immune system into a higher state of readiness. Thus the immune system of germ-free mice is on the contrary underdeveloped,

“characterised by near total absence of inflammatory cells in the tissue layers of the digestive tract, fewer antibody-producing plasma cells; lower levels of serum gamma-globulins; and underdeveloped Peyer’s patches – the secondary lymphoid organs in the gut where immune cells interact.” [50]

Germ-free animals take also take longer for their immune system to react after vaccination as it does for them to heal properly. At the same time, the different communities of micro-organisms that inhabit the body are highly dependent on the maintenance of the appropriate environmental conditions within each niche.

“Thus, shifts in pH, oxygen tension, ionic strength and other factors all disrupt community structure in the same way abnormal fluctuations might affect the nature of a forest. Something as seemingly innocuous as a reduction in saliva flow, a characteristic of Sjogren’s syndrome, throws the oral ecology into turmoil.” [51]

Hamilton also notes that

“this sensitivity to local environmental conditions, coupled with the suspected role of the indigenous flora as an initial line of defence, suggests that infectious disease is less an attack by germs than a consequence of ecological change.” [52]

Or more precisely, it is the consequence of ecological disruption which renders the body more vulnerable to potentially deadly microbes from outside the body.

Of course, all this fits in only too well with René Dubos’ ecological view of infectious disease. Dubos sums up his position on the subject very clearly and I think it is worth quoting it in full.

“The more important reason for the stubborn persistence of infection lies in our lack of understanding of the interrelationships between man and his biological environment. There are many forms of infectious diseases that are not prevented or cured by sanitation, vaccines, or drugs, and indeed are probably not amenable to control by these approaches . . .

The microbial diseases most common in our communities today arise from the activities of microorganisms that are ubiquitous in the environment, persist in the body without causing any obvious harm under ordinary circumstances, and exert pathological effects only when the infected person is under conditions of physiological stress. In such a type of microbial disease, the event of infection is of less importance than the hidden manifestations of the smouldering infectious process and than the physiological disturbances that convert latent infection into overt symptoms and pathology.

This is the reason why the orthodox methods based on the classical doctrines of epidemiology, immunology, and chemotherapy are not sufficient to deal with the problem of endogenous disease. The need is to develop procedures for re-establishing the state of equilibrium between host and parasite”. [53]

People are just beginning to understand this. Thus for Dr John Warner of the Department of Child Health at Southampton University “there is less and less dispute that the absence of dirt in our lives is responsible for the dramatic rise in asthma rates” (5 percent of children were affected 20 years ago and today the figure is 20 percent). He notes that in developing countries the rates are rising too and in particular among the affluent who have adopted westernised lifestyles.

“All the evidence in asthma research”, he tells us, “is beginning to make it clear that our relatively sterile lives fail to expose a baby, at the right time, to bacteria that should flourish in the bowel and kick-start the immune system to fight off allergens.” For Warner “the theory gains credibility with every new piece of research that comes along”. [54]

Already children, sometimes only a few weeks old, according to Warner, are being fed bacteria in order to build up their immune system against certain diseases that may be prevalent in their area, for instance lactobacillus bacteria that are an essential part of our indigenous microbiota, and even BCG, a tuberculosis type bug, in areas where TB has become rife.

Michael Doyle, director of the University’s Centre for Food safety, notes that “in most animals these friendly bacteria have killed all the E.coli 0157 bacteria by germ warfare inside the gastrointestinal tract within two weeks”. [55]

A new veterinary medicine called CF-3 or ‘Pre-empt’ has been launched which contains a mixture of “beneficial microbes” that occur naturally in chickens, It was approved by the Federal Drug Administration in the USA in March 1998. This is indeed a very encouraging development. However if one wishes to be a purist one can argue that Preempt is merely providing, in a contrived and expensive way, a measure of immunity against the action of pathogens that would be naturally transferred from a mother hen to her chicks largely through her faecal droppings, if she were not totally isolated from her chicks in her factory environment. The real solution is thus to return to smaller-scale, more natural and indeed less hygienic methods of rearing chickens.

A paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science describes other such experiments recently conducted at the University of Georgia which have successfully removed the 0157 strain of the E.coli bacterium so seriously implicated in recent outbreaks in food poisoning in the UK and elsewhere by administering ‘probiotic’ cultures of other E.coli strains that are harmless to people and animals including cattle that harbour the bacterium.

All this should make it pretty clear that the new hygiene regulations have very little to do with reducing the incidence of food poisoning among the general public. Their object is to make further contribute to the disgraceful policy of transferring food production and distribution to a handful of colossal transnational corporations that, in the global economy we have set up, now control government policies in just about every sector of the economy.

If we are really to improve our health and in particular reduce drastically the incidence of food poisoning then this policy must be totally reversed. Significantly both the German and the Italian ministers of agriculture have recently stated in so many words that the era of industrial food production is now over.

Not so in Britain, where the Minister of Agriculture has just publicly admitted (11 April 2001) that it is official government policy to kill off most of what remains of the small farm community, for intensive large-scale farms, he informs us, are more “productive”, which of course is the opposite of the truth, and, I suppose too, much more hygienic. The Minister clearly lives in a world of his own.

I think any sensible person today must realize that industrial food production must be phased out, and phased out very quickly. At the same time the appropriate regulatory measures must be taken to assure the re-emergence of a decentralized food production system in the hands of small independent farmers, cheese makers, bakers, butchers, and grocers, geared to producing healthy, natural, organic foods, catering for a largely local market.

The public is now ready for this transition. It is totally disenchanted with industrially produced food and it has every reason to be. Sales of organic food are booming. The market for it in the UK is increasing at the rate of 40 percent per annum and will continue to increase, especially if the government cooperates in creating the right conditions, which it has so far totally failed to do.

Only such a food production system is compatible with ensuring the health of the general public, of providing a stable livelihood for a significant proportion of our population, and of providing too the economic infrastructure for a healthy community-based rural society. I will go further and say that only such a food production system can begin to satisfy basic biological, social, ecological, and moral imperatives.

References

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