Unless We Stand Up and Demand Safe Meat Production, Next Time We WILL Have a Plague

McClatchy points out that 6 0f the 8 genetic segments in the current swine flu come from a 1990's outbreak on a large North Carolina pig farm:

The new H1N1 influenza virus that continues to spread through the U.S. has ancestry in a swine flu outbreak that first struck a North Carolina hog farm more than 10 years ago, according to scientists studying the strain's genetic makeup....

Two of the segments, [Raul Rabadan, a Columbia University scientist] said, appear to come from Eurasia and are somewhat mysterious in origin. The other six can be traced to the North American pig outbreak, which turned out to include a combination of avian, swine and human flu...

"Pigs are amazing mixing bowls for creating new viruses," said Bob Martin, senior officer at the Pew Environmental Group. Martin was executive director of the study.

"It's a matter of when, not if," Martin said of the creation of new viruses on factory hog farms. "The structure of the system is the problem."

The industrial pig farming industry, of course, as well as scientists on the payroll, all swear that industrial pig farming is safe, and that the viruses would happen whether or not the pigs are couped up in toxic environments. This is, of course, untrue.

If the factory meat industry is not forced to clean up its act or shut down, then some new, lethal cocktail of viruses will eventually be unleashed from one of these farms which does create a lethal pandemic for humans.

Just as the financial collapse resulted from ignoring the repeated warnings of those who described what was really going on, we will eventually be brought to our knees by a virus incubated at a factory meat facility unless we change the way we raise meat.

Afterword: The FDA approved cloned meat in January of 2008, and no one really knows whether or not cloned meat is already on the market (it probably is).

Cloned meat production, along with genetically modified foods which can disrupt entire insect populations and cause other problems, are additional examples of the fact that the food industry will create more and more dangerous frankenfoods - and disease-creating facilities - unless the public stands up and demands safe food production and real food.