Health
Conspiracy of silence?
Michael Brett-Crowther
Major A. Ramsay Tainsh, MBE, an environmentalist who lives and works in Sweden, has specialised in food, water and fuel problems for thirty years, and though his chief interest is in the developing nations, he has much to teach the so-called developed ones. Responsible for the evacuation of North Burma in 1942, he saw at first hand what refugees suffered when their food was insufficient and of poor quality. In particular he learned about an insidious disease called mycotoxicosis.
Mycotoxicosis is the disease resulting from the eating of grain which has been infected by bacteria and fungi. There are two kinds of mycotoxicosis: primary, which speedily follows the taking of heavily infested food when the body is already very weak; and secondary, which is cumulative. In this as in every other form of pollution babies and children are especially vulnerable. The major has written extensively on the disease, or perhaps one should say the diseases which mycotoxicosis causes. The catalogue is alarming. As the major has said, "Mycotoxins attack the living cells, beginning with the central nervous system; they appear to damage all parts of the body and pave the way for the following diseases: blindness, deafness, protein deficiency, beriberi, pellagra, dropsy, oedema, stomatitis, glossitis, cheilosis, burning feet, pins and needles in the hand, tropical sores, leprosy, chronic diarrhoea, prolapse of the intestine, sprue, tuberculosis, pneumonia, jaundice, cancer of the liver, heart failure, smallpox and cot death."
Agriculture today is rapidly becoming too expensive for many farmers. Those who get out, however, are succeeded by larger enterprises whose chief aim is to make more money. 'Factory farming' has been criticised because it requires animals to live indoors in unnatural conditions, which are also cruel and unhealthy. But one side of factory farming has not been sufficiently questioned. Livestock are being fed grain which is mouldy and damp, or dried but still carrying the poisons produced by damp. These poisons accumulate in the animals, which are slaughtered for the table before they succumb to their disease. Besides, they are fed antibiotics and trace elements which to some extent remedy the
But when people eat animals which have been fed mycotoxins in their diet, the mycotoxins pass into the people. This is an inevitable consequence of the food chain. The root of the matter is in the fields. Modern farming has increased the weight of the harvest, but much of the increased weight is moisture In the grain, not nutrients. For example, the 'miracle strains' of rice contain 14.5 per cent of moisture as opposed to the usual figure of around 10 per cent. If the moisture content of grain is below 13 per cent, fungi and bactena cannot grow, whatever the temperature. When dampgrainis combine-harvested, it falls into the truck. A micro-climate develops, providing excellent conditions for the fungi In and on the grain to sporulate. Well before the grain can be dried, fungi have poisoned it. Why is nobody doing anything about this problem? The reason is that few know I!. exists. It was not until large numbers oi battery-reared poultry began dying in the south in the early 'sixties that government departments investigated their strange death' Those that survived were given a greater proportion of fish meal, which is a natural antidote to mycotoxins, together with antibiotics and trace elements.
It has been known since the 'thirties that mycotoxins cause abortion in swine. But the vast changes in agriculture and the develoPment of factory farming have produced a change in our habits which is only now beginning to take effect. New diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, have appeared; and with the use of many processed foods in the average diet the causes of death in the population have changed also.
But mycotoxicosis remains largely unknown. In Sweden, as a result of Major Tainsh's researches, mycotoxicology will be introduced into the medical schools' curricula' In this country, primary and secondary mycotoxicosis are not included in the teaching programmes of any university or polytechnic. There seems to be a conspiracY of silence.
Michael Brett-Crowther lectures in biology at the University of Salford.
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