TORONTO, May 18, 2001 -- Jody Berland, a humanities professor in York University’s Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies, says the connection between livestock farm practices and water safety precedes the Walkerton, Ont. water tragedy by at least a century. During a lecture, Berland will examine the longer historical patterns that led to Walkerton and discuss whether the media has helped or hindered people’s understanding of the complex social, scientific, agricultural and economic factors behind it. Her lecture will take place at York on Tuesday, May 22, 12 - 2 p.m.
Berland says that Walkerton was neither the first nor the last instance of agriculturally related tragedy. She says in the year since the Walkerton tragedy occurred – in which deadly E.Coli bacteria from a nearby cattle farm contaminated the town’s water supply, claiming several lives – the world has witnessed a major foot and mouth disease epidemic in Britain and in parts of Europe and several incidents of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human form of mad cow disease – Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).
"The Walkerton story is a particularly lucid example of juxtaposing obvious catastrophes against less visible longer-term developments," says Berland. "The focus on individual pipes and singular events has dominated the media and the public inquiry at the expense of larger issues including: government privatization, factory farming, beef-based diets, genetic experimentation, and the general industrialization of agriculture and the environment."
Berland says the 18th and 19th centuries marked a period of enormous escalation of meat-eating among the affluent. "This started a radical transformation of world agriculture, world economies, and world health. Keeping up with peoples’s insatiable appetite for meat has meant depleting forests and abandoning traditional farm practices, and has deprived the water ecosystem the ability to cleanse itself as it had for countless centuries."
Berland’s presentation will take place in the Harry Crowe Room, Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies building, York University, 4700 Keele Street.
The lecture is the final in the 2000/2001 Brownbag Research Seminars, a lunch-and-learn series on science, technology and culture sponsored by Atkinson’s School of Analytic Studies and Information Technology. The annual Seminars provide a public forum for scholars in science and technology studies to establish tighter research links between York and neighbouring academic colleagues and to share works in progress before submitting them to journals and conferences.
-30-
For more information, please contact:
Prof. Jody Berland
Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies
York University
Home: 416-654-1727
jberland@yorku.ca
Ken Turriff
Media Relations
York University
416-736-2100, ext. 22086
kturriff@yorku.ca
YU/062/01
