Pork Council: Nein on 'swine'

Follow this link to a lengthy article on factory farming and mutation patterns of viruses.

Since its identification during the Great Depression, H1N1 swine flu had only drifted slightly from its original genome. Then in 1998 a highly pathogenic strain began to decimate sows on a farm in North Carolina and new, more virulent versions began to appear almost yearly, including a variant of H1N1 that contained the internal genes of H3N2 (the other type-A flu circulating among humans).

Researchers interviewed by Science worried that one of these hybrids might become a human flu (both the 1957 and 1968 pandemics are believed to have originated from the mixing of bird and human viruses inside pigs), and urged the creation of an official surveillance system for swine flu: an admonition, of course, that went unheeded in a Washington prepared to throw away billions on bioterrorism fantasies.

But what caused this acceleration of swine flu evolution? Virologists have long believed that the intensive agricultural system of southern China is the principal engine of influenza mutation: both seasonal "drift" and episodic genomic "shift." But the corporate industrialisation of livestock production has broken China's natural monopoly on influenza evolution. Animal husbandry in recent decades has been transformed into something that more closely resembles the petrochemical industry than the happy family farm depicted in school readers.

In 1965, for instance, there were 53m US hogs on more than 1m farms; today, 65m hogs are concentrated in 65,000 facilities. This has been a transition from old-fashioned pig pens to vast excremental hells, containing tens of thousands of animals with weakened immune systems suffocating in heat and manure while exchanging pathogens at blinding velocity with their fellow inmates.

Last year a commission convened by the Pew Research Center issued a report on "industrial farm animal production" that underscored the acute danger that "the continual cycling of viruses … in large herds or flocks [will] increase opportunities for the generation of novel virus through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human to human transmission." The commission also warned that promiscuous antibiotic use in hog factories (cheaper than humane environments) was sponsoring the rise of resistant staph infections, while sewage spills were producing outbreaks of E coli and pfiesteria (the protozoan that has killed 1bn fish in Carolina estuaries and made ill dozens of fishermen).

Any amelioration of this new pathogen ecology would have to confront the monstrous power of livestock conglomerates such as Smithfield Farms (pork and beef) and Tyson (chickens). The commission reported systemic obstruction of their investigation by corporations, including blatant threats to withhold funding from cooperative researchers.

This is a highly globalised industry with global political clout. Just as Bangkok-based chicken giant Charoen Pokphand was able to suppress enquiries into its role in the spread of bird flu in southeast Asia, so it is likely that the forensic epidemiology of the swine flu outbreak will pound its head against the corporate stonewall of the pork industry.

No wonder Big Pork is scrambling and spinning. It's likely that their entire business model is at risk.

Inappropriate comment deleted.

— RTB

I wish a reporter with a camera would go to the epicenter in Mexico where the people are complaining and film the small town and the factory farms and show us what is happening in a country with probably little to no regulations.

jjsmith2 you need to google swine flu. If you will scroll down these comments you will see one definition.

Hysteria seems to be coming from an industry that is worried that they might lose a few bucks.

Calling it the swine flu is a complete joke and creates an unwarranted hysteria. After all, it isn't a swine flu.

All I can say to the pork council is a big get over it....PLEEEEEEEAAAAAAAASSSSSSE. Maybe the problem is that a lot of pork eaters are just plain stupid and don't understand the issue.

Pork Council - get a clue. Don't try to play Orwellian word games. It is SWINE flu and we will call it SWINE flu whether you like it or not. Bugger off!

So a spade is not a spade? We could call it "Pork Council Flu".

Hope no one tells the poultry folks about chicken pox.

"It may have come from a cluster of Smithfield joint venture corporate hog manufacturing plants around La Gloria, Veracruz state Mexico."

As Jeff Foxworthy would say, "If over half the population of your town is ill, and the pig population there outnumbers the people by a ratio of 340:1...you just might be ground zero for an international swine flu outbreak."

What else should we call it?
The Other White Flu?

Or pick your own combination from the list below. Just remember that if they're domesticated, they're swine & that CDC says it's a new influenza of swine origin.
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu

Boar, Cob roller, Hog, Javelina, Oinker, Peccary, Pig, Piggy, Piglet, Porker, Razorback, Shoat, Sow, Warthog

Is that Va. Ham sale B1G1?

It may have come from a cluster of Smithfield joint venture corporate hog manufacturing plants around La Gloria, Veracruz state Mexico. If such were the case, the appropriate colloquial name for it would be Mexican SPP Globalist Pig Flu.

The jumping up and down by the industry reminds me of hearing them say that the smell of pig poop didn't leave their property border. Of course that was after they finally admitted that pig poop does stink.

It is patently absurd to call it anything else, The pig is the reservoir for this particular strain of virus, H1N1. What should the virologists call it? Elephant flu perhaps, because there are no elephant farmers in the Carolinas.

Not to be too p.c., but I'm going to call it H1N1 and noticed that Harris Teeter has Va. Ham on sale in the deli which I will buy

Is the H1N1 swine flu virus the same as human H1N1 viruses?
No. The H1N1 swine flu viruses are antigenically very different from human H1N1 viruses and, therefore, vaccines for human seasonal flu would not provide protection from H1N1 swine flu viruses.

It is the swine flu... It is what it is.

More run amok political correctness at work It is the Mexican flu. We had the Hong Kong flu, and now we have the Mexican flu. However, we can't upset the Mexicans, so it is pig flu. If course, it is in humans, but it is still calle swine flu. How stupid can political correctness get?

Maybe the pork council could use their old slogan from several years back. "Saying it doesn't make it so". Poor babies.

Yep, another industry maligned by the news media. Now all the pork producers will be going out of business because people won't buy pork. What me worry? Had a delicious pork barbecue plate lunch at Smithfield's yesterday! Mmmm.