The Swine Flu Crisis Lays Bare The Meat Industry’s Monstrous Power
The threat of a global swine flu pandemic originating from Mexico was first predicted nearly six years ago. This article discusses surveillance and monitoring issues and reports that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was not aware of the outbreak until six days after Mexico began imposing emergency measures.
This outbreak demonstrates the non-existent surveillance of the interface between human and animal diseases. The H1N1 strain of swine flu was originally identified during the Great Depression and new, more virulent versions have begun appearing almost yearly. Researchers have long been concerned that one of these hybrids would become a human flu and urged the creation of an official surveillance system for the swine flu; these warnings have gone long unheeded.
Virologists believe the intensive agricultural system of southern China is one of the chief engines of influenza mutation and that further corporate industrialization of animal farming has caused these outbreaks to occur in other areas of the world. For example, in 1965 there were 53 million U.S. hogs on more than a million farms; today, 65 million hogs are concentrated in just 65,000 facilities.