swine flu: the mis-information

As we have all heard, there are great concerns over a possible pandemic of swine flu.

While I do not think this should be taken lightly, I do think the media is not providing the entire truth to this story.  Whether this becomes serious or not, only time will tell.  But the one fact that is not being told is that we (the public and consumer) have in our power the possibility of this absolutely NOT getting worse in the future.  But, they don’t want you to know this.

You may find in the various reports that the great omission is how this all happened.  So, I am going to tell you:

This all happened because of our insatiable desire for meat, and our unethical treatment of animals.

There.  Done.  You are not in the dark anymore.  Don’t you feel better.

In order to have enough meat to provide for U.S. consumption, corporations create Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s), or factory farms.  These are farms where large volumes of animals are raised and slaughtered to produce as much food, as quickly as possible. They have developed ways to grow these animals to as large as they can in the shortest of times.  Most of this is because they fill them with growth hormones.

Because of the confined nature of the farm, along with the use of hormones, they have to do disastrous things to these animals.  For example, pigs don’t like to be contained.  It naturally makes them nervous, and with the addition of hormones, that behavior can get worse.  As a result, many pigs have taken up the habit of gnawing on things.. any things.  There is a tendency for the animals to gnaw off another animals tail.  To prevent this, instead of changing the way they raise these animals, because that would affect the bottom line, they simply cut off each pigs tail.  This is one resaon, all the animals have to be on a cocktail of antibiotics to prevent infection and disease.

The combination of the hormones and the antibiotics has led to an ever increasing resistant strain of bacterium and viri.  Which in turn leads to an ever-increasing dose of antibiotics, and the circle continues.  So, we are now in a situation where we have extremely resistant strains of this virus migrating whereever the pork is being delivered.

Hence… swine flu outbreak.

And before you jump on the anti-mexican, anti-immigration ship… aside from the fact it is racist, it is also ill-informed:

In the last several years, U.S. hog conglomerates have opened giant swine CAFOs south of the border, including dozens around Mexico City in the neighboring states of Mexico and Puebla. Smithfield Foods also reportedly operates a huge swine facility in the State of Veracruz. Many of these CAFOs raise tens of thousands of pigs at a time. Cheaper labor costs and a desire to enter the Latin American market are drawing more industrialized agriculture to Mexico all the time, wiping out smaller, traditional farms, which now account for only a small portion of swine production in Mexico.

This is not a fault of Mexico or Mexicans.  This is UNITED STATES corporations using international policy to grow swine in such a way that is leading to the death of these people.  THIS country is the sole holder of the blame.

The only way we can fight this current outbreak is through the localized treatment of individuals with the hope that we have an antibiotic strong enough to counter the swine flu.

The only way we can prevent this in the future is stop our current practices of how we raise animals for consumption.  The only way that can stop is when we, the consumer, demand better food and eat less meat.