Factory Farm Connection to Swine Flu?

Speaking of a righteous porkchop, I’ve been waiting for some mainstream coverage to confirm whether there is a link between the current swine flu outbreak and factory farms.

I’ve been seeing a blog posts and Daily Kos has a couple diaries citing Mexican press coverage on the subject.

But in the U.S. papers, it’s tougher to find the info. Buried deep in this New York Times piece is this note:

Mexican officials said they had traced the origins of the outbreak to a rural area known as La Gloria in the southeastern state of Veracruz, the site of several major pig farms.

We still don’t know how serious this outbreak is. Though the death toll is climbing in Mexico and the numbers of confirmed cases in the U.S. doubled from 20 to 40 in the last 24 hours.

The most informative piece I’ve seen though is on a Humane Society blog, Factory Farming Campaign. In the post from Saturday, Dr. Michael Greger, director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society, writes in “Swine Flu and Factory Farms: Fast Track to Disaster” about the history of swine/avian flues and their increasing prevalence on high density farms.

He also notes the dangers posed by the current practices of moving animals cross country, from breading areas, to confined feeding locations to slaughter…all the way increasing the chance of disease spread.

None of the mainstream media reports I’ve seen have made the connection between large pork producer Smithfield. The Mexican press has apparently made the link and there’s a Smithfield release rebutting the claim. The Virginian-Pilot reports on the rebuttal, but little else on the subject.

Maverick Farms owner Tom Philpott discusses the Smithfield link in a post on Grist.

I’ll be eager to see how this all plays out. I’m hopeful that as more is learned about the virus and its cause that we will know more about how to treat and prevent.