Swine Flu and factory farms and the corporate media

Time Magazine tells us “Swine Flu: Don’t Blame the Pigs.”   The article is interesting and gives a brief history of the influenza virus and its relation to livestock.  

All of this made the flu virus a tenacious foe from the outset, but once humans invented farming and learned to cultivate animals, we made a bad situation much worse. All at once, chickens, ducks and pigs — which never had much to do with one another — began living cheek to jowl in high numbers and often unsanitary conditions. Farm families and people working in live markets then began mingling with the critters. That’s a pathogenic speed blender, and the viruses have taken full advantage of it. “It’s really an ecological issue,” says Daszak.

The problem is that the article never mentions the rise of factory farming as an incubator of some scary disease.   Wow, our corporate media doesn’t really want to go there.  Though no clear links have been established yet, but circumstantial evidence points to a strong possibility that the roots of this pandemic can be found in giant U.S. operated factory farms in Mexico.  Here is one blogger’s take:  

The cause is not yet known, but many speculate that this deadly virus could be linked to factory farming. When the CDC and the USDA conduct their investigation in Mexico, they will most likely start with the industrial scale pig farms (“confined animal feeding operations” or CAFOs) that have been growing in numbers over the last decade. With the draw of cheap labor and land, American pig conglomerates have been opening up giant swine CAFOs in Mexico, including dozens around Mexico City, Puebla and Veracruz (where the outbreak is believed to have started).

Filed under: Mexico, agriculture, environment, farming, flu pandemic, swine flu , CDC, confined animal feeding operations, corporation, disease, environment, factory farm, factory farmin, farming, flu, hogs, influenza, Mexico, pandemic, pigs, Smithfield, swine flu, Time magazine, United States