Whether we are looking at animals or potted dairy produce, unnecessary transport carries not just goods but risks and impacts. By Roland Clift.



It is not the case, as some of my North American friends seem to think, that Britain has been closed down by animal pestilence; but this certainly is a miserable time for livestock farmers. Years of export bans on beef, with the hope of preventing bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE, or mad cow disease) from spreading to continental Europe, were not completely successful: The disease did show up in many European countries (not including Sweden, which is significant), and uncertainty exists as to whether BSE spread from Britain or broke out independently.

Eating nerve tissue from cows with BSE has infected some people with the equivalent human disease: variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). The incubation period is very long, so we do not know how many people will be afflicted with vCJD, although we do know that the effects are horrific. We also know that although the number of people infected will be significant, it will be small compared with, say, fatalities or brain damage caused by transport accidents.

Just when BSE seemed to have gone away, we got foot-and-mouth disease. This disease affects cows, pigs, and sheep, any of which can carry it. Although the symptoms are distressing, animals can recover from foot-and-mouth, and it causes, at worst, rare minor infections in humans. Foot-and-mouth is first and foremost an economic disease: If your animals have had it, nobody wants them, so foot-and-mouth wipes out not your herd but your markets. Vaccination is unpopular because vaccinated animals cannot be distinguished from animals exposed to the disease. Therefore, to contain foot-and-mouth, animals exposed to or just located near an outbreak are slaughtered. From there, the fate is the same as for any non-recyclable waste: incineration or landfill.



Foot-and-mouth has affected only a small percentage of British farm animals -- rural Britain has not been shut down. But rural tourism has collapsed under the pressure of press pictures of piles of carcasses. This has shown, in turn, that (except in Northern Ireland) rural tourism contributes far more to the gross domestic product than does farming.

Thus, the economic pestilence is amplified. Even the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food admitted that Something Must Be Done. Farming, or at least government regulation of farming, has to change.

Back now to industrial ecology: If this concept is based on a loose analogy between industrial and living systems, what can we learn from these rural traumas?

It is generally accepted that BSE was spread, if not actually caused, by feeding cows with animal protein -- bits of dead sheep and cow. Some of the evidence that supports this conclusion comes from observations of similar afflictions in human groups who indulge in ritual cannibalism. Cows, being vegetarians, do not normally go in for cannibalism. In Sweden, it is considered unethical to force cows to be cannibals and eat meat. Consequently, BSE has not appeared in Sweden, an interesting case of ethics bringing material rewards. This provides a sharp reminder of the need to avoid contamination when reusing or recycling waste. Abiotic systems do not have the same propensity to amplify the effect of a trace component, but the outbreak of BSE is a reminder to pay attention to buildup of contaminants, such as zinc in steel or refractory particles in aluminum, which can wreck the properties of recycled material.

The BSA outbreak is also a reminder to design collection and transport systems to avoid mixing and cross-contamination. The spread of foot-and-mouth disease is more salutary because it reminds us of things we prefer to ignore about transport. The Phillips report, an extraordinarily detailed inquiry into BSE, unearthed the fact that live animals are transported around the country like heavily traded stock -- from market to pasture to a different market to a different pasture and so on and so on (Phillips 2000). An accident was waiting to happen: An infection would spread uncontrollably. Then the accident did happen (although where the infection came from is not clear).

Foot-and-mouth disease spread far more rapidly and widely than in the last serious outbreak in 1967, when such transport of animals was not common practice. The pattern is reminiscent of the famous Wuppertal Yogurt Pot study (Boge 1995), which showed that the components of a small pot of yogurt in Germany traveled thousands of kilo-meters around Europe before being eaten, but with the added impact that when the transported animals meet they exchange viruses, like people in air terminals, but with catastrophic effects that the human population has not experienced.

Whether we are looking at animals or potted dairy produce, the point is that unnecessary transport carries not just goods but risks and impacts. Thus, the conclusions that carry over to industrial ecology are: Do not mix goods, whether they are on their way to being used or are being recovered after use; control the supply chain to avoid contamination; look for local sources to cut down on transportation and make it easier to manage the supply chain and maintain quality.

Although Something Must Be Done about farming practices, it is not clear why we have fallen into the habit of moving animals or yogurt pots around so freely and, one suspects, unnecessarily. Where do the economic drivers come from, and how strong are they? If you are comfortable with expressing environmental impacts in economic terms, some of the drivers must come from the fact that transport does not carry the external cost of its environmental impacts.

Many of these impacts are obvious enough. Road traffic is the main cause of poor air quality in urban areas and of nuisances such as noise. Transport, not including air traffic, accounts for about 40% of the United Kingdom’s greenhouse warming emissions. Increases in vehicle efficiency scarcely dent the emissions: People buy bigger cars or four-wheel-drive utilities. Transport accidents are a main cause of injuries and death. In spite of some much-publicized rail accidents in recent months, road accidents dominate the statistics. Fatalities from automobile accidents far outnumber cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and even suicides among desperate farmers.

These are some of the obvious externalities of road transport. The social costs of the car are made clear when they are removed. For example, if you spend time in a city such as Zurich or Gothenburg, you will notice that public transport works and that cars are regarded almost like dog excrement or banana skins: nuisances to be kept off the city streets. Walking around the city is enjoyable. You walk to your local grocery store to buy your locally produced provisions. You take your empty bottles and cans back to the store -- this is called “reverse vending” -- so that they are in one place for collection and cross-contamination is avoided. This leads to high rates of material recycling and also cuts down on the use of vehicles to collect the used items, which in turn reduces the impacts of “reverse logistics.” The whole urban metabolism works. Freedom from the tyranny of road traffic improves the quality not just of the air but also of life.

Another example of local sourcing and distribution is provided by my daughter’s activities. She lives in Vancouver where, as an herbal therapist, she can legally dispense cannabis to sufferers of multiple sclerosis and advanced cancer. She knows the importance of controlling the supply chain; she buys only from known suppliers, and the legality of the operation depends on preventing leakage from the supply chain. Free movement of goods cannot be contemplated -- WTO rules do not apply. Yet this is the very model of a sustainable activity: source your feedstock locally and roll your own. In business school jargon, these are “tight” supply chains with “line of sight” from producer to consumer, strict quality control, and, most significantly, short transportation distances.

At a time when globalization is supposed to be the dominant paradigm, it is unfashionable, even quaint, to advocate localized economic and social intercourse. But this article was written by someone who is so quaint that he prefers to talk to his friends over a beer (preferably brewed locally) rather than over the Internet. And if I can walk to the pub, so much the better.

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By Roland Clift, professor of environmental technology at the University of Surrey and director of the Centre for Environmental Strategy. Copyright 2002 Journal of Industrial Ecology, a GreenBiz News Affiliate.