CDC Confirms Swine Flu Virus Ties to US Factory FarmingAuthor: Daniel Taylor

Apr



One of the big pushbacks currently being undertaken in the media in regards to the swine flu pandemic is the idea that those seeking to link it to factory farming methods and big agri-business are merely opportunists, that factory farms are in no way responsible for this outbreak. However, the CDC has confirmed that the current H1N1 flu virus wreaking global havoc owes it ancestry to a strain of swine flu that originated in a North Carolina factory farm in 1988:

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in North Carolina.

This analysis, first released by Columbia University’s Center for Computation Biology, has now been reportedly confirmed by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Robert Webster, the director of the U.S. Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization, and considered the “godfather of flu research,”is reported as saying “The triple reassortant in pigs [first discovered in the U.S. in 1998] seems to be the precursor.”

I'm shocked, shocked that there's flu virus going on in factory farming.

These factory farms are disgusting and dangerous, and they’re rapidly multiplying.May
09The Real Deal: Who Created Swine Flu

Fingers are pointing to our current system of agriculture for the outbreak of swine flu (H1N1). When you decide to cram a lot of pigs together you’re creating a perfect place for disease to grow and thrive. In particular, some fingers are pointing towards a massive pig farm run by Smithfield Corporation.

Think of it like dirty dishes. If you cram them in your sink with leftovers and leave it there for awhile it’s going to have a lot of mold in no time. Now think of the pig “poo” lagoons that get created (thousands of pigs, no washroom and one big hole). There so terrible that they have to be covered up and left there – it just doesn’t go away (just like dirty dishes after several months).

“No-one yet knows whether swine flu will become a global pandemic, but it is becoming clear where it came from – most likely a giant pig factory farm run by an American multinational corporation in Veracruz, Mexico.(1)

These factory farms are disgusting and dangerous, and they’re rapidly multiplying. Thousands of pigs are brutally crammed into dirty warehouses and sprayed with a cocktail of drugs — posing a health risk to more than just our food — they and their manure lagoons create the perfect conditions to breed dangerous new viruses like swine flu. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) must investigate and develop regulations for these farms to protect global health.”

Of course these ponds are far worse than dirty dishes because they can leak into lakes, rivers and drinking water. In fact:

Smithfield itself has already been fined $12.6m and is currently under another federal investigation in the US for toxic environmental damage from pig excrement lakes.(5)

People we need to clean up the way we grow food because in the end it’s going to come back to bite us in the back side. Kind of the way a mountain of dirty dishes, flies and nasty bugs does.

See the full petition here.

The Original Petition Call
Dear friends,

Evidence is emerging that traces swine flu to giant factory pig farms that are dirty, dangerous, and inhumane. Sign the petition to the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization to investigate and regulate these threats to our health:

No-one yet knows whether swine flu will become a global pandemic, but it is becoming clear where it came from – most likely a giant pig factory farm run by an American multinational corporation in Veracruz, Mexico.(1)

These factory farms are disgusting and dangerous, and they’re rapidly multiplying. Thousands of pigs are brutally crammed into dirty warehouses and sprayed with a cocktail of drugs — posing a health risk to more than just our food — they and their manure lagoons create the perfect conditions to breed dangerous new viruses like swine flu. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) must investigate and develop regulations for these farms to protect global health.

Big agrobusiness will try to obstruct and scuttle any attempts at reform, so we need a massive outcry that health authorities can’t ignore. Sign the petition below for investigation and regulation of factory farms and tell your friends and family and we will deliver it to the UN agencies. If we reach 200,000 signatures we will deliver it to the WHO in Geneva with a herd of cardboard pigs. For every 1000 petition signatures we will add a pig to the herd:

[www.avaaz.org]

Last week the flu was all that we talked about — Mexico has been nearly paralysed and across the world leaders halted air travel, banned pork imports and initiated drastic controls to mitigate the spreading virus. As the threat shows signs of subsiding the question becomes where it came from and how we stop another outbreak.

Smithfield Corporation, the largest pig producer in the world whose farm is being fingered as the source of the H1N1 outbreak, denies any connection between their pigs and the flu and big agrobusiness worldwide pays huge sums of money for research to argue that biosafety is ensured in industrial hog production. But the WHO has been saying for years that ‘a new pandemic is inevitable’(2) and experts from the European Commission and the FAO have cautioned that the rapid move from small holdings to industrial pig production is in fact increasing the risk of development and transmission of disease epidemics. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn that scientists still do not know the extent that infectious compounds produced in factory farms affect human health.(3)

Studies abound of the horrific conditions endured by pigs in concentrated large-scale operations, and the devastating economic impact on small farmer communities of bloated large-scale operations.(4) Smithfield itself has already been fined $12.6m and is currently under another federal investigation in the US for toxic environmental damage from pig excrement lakes.(5)

But even with all of this damaging evidence, a combination of increased global meat consumption and a powerful industry motivated by profit at the cost of human health, means that instead of being shut down – these sickening factory farm operations are propagating around the world and we are subsidising them (6). In the wake of this swine flu threat, let’s hold industrial pig producers to account. Sign the petition for investigation and regulation:

[www.avaaz.org]

If we resolve this global health crisis boldly by reassessing our food consumption and production, and urgently calling for an inquiry into the impact of factory farms on human health, we could put in place tough farm practice rules that will save the global population from future animal borne lethal pandemics. this is just the tip, in all phases of animal farming the virus's
are mtaking off, the price of cheap meat!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/10/2009 04:01AM by riverhousebill.