Playing Chicken with Big Ag: Advocating Regionally Sensitive Food Sovereignty to Address Pandemic Influenza

Abstract

While a focus on pandemic preparedness is important, it does not address long term solutions to outbreak. In our highly globalized world, massive inequalities shape an environment in which preparedness benefits those of the first world, while ignoring the majority of disease victims. This strategy may have regionally contained outbreaks thus far, however avian influenza has the potential to spread across the world. Thus, it is important to move beyond basic awareness methods when seeking to control the spread of diseases. By viewing disease outbreak as a symptom of a greater world problem, we come closer to addressing the causes of outbreak.