Big Farms Make Big Flu – Dispatches On Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, And The Nature of Science

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rob Wallace is an evolutionary biologist and public health phylogeographer. He is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota and an advisor to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. He has consulted for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on avian influenza. He is previously a co-author of FARMING HUMAN PATHOGENS: ECOLOGICAL RESILIENCE AND EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS

Date/Time:  Monday, March 6,  2017.  Doors open at 6:30; event starts at 7 PM.
Location:  Eliot Chapel, First Unitarian Church, SW 12th and Salmon
Admission:  Donation requested: $5-20; however, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.