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View Full Version : Is H1N1 (swine flu) a consequence of NAFTA and Agribusiness




hulugu
May 1, 2009, 01:03 AM
According to this article (http://www.narconews.com/Issue57/article3512.html), the H1N1 virus known colloquially as the "Swine Flu" may be the result of the massive pig farm in Mexico owned by an American company.

US and Mexico authorities claim that neither knew about the “swine flu” outbreak until April 24. But after hundreds of residents of a town in Veracruz, Mexico, came down with its symptoms, the story had already hit the Mexican national press by April 5. The daily La Jornada reported:

Clouds of flies emanate from the rusty lagoons where the Carroll Ranches business tosses the fecal wastes of its pig farms, and the open-air contamination is already generating an epidemic of respiratory infections in the town of La Gloria, in the Perote Valley, according to Town Administrator Bertha Crisóstomo López.

The town has 3,000 inhabitants, hundreds of whom reported severe flu symptoms in March.

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, reporting from Mexico, has identified a La Gloria child who contracted the first case of identified “swine flu” in February as “patient zero,” five-year-old Edgar Hernández, now a survivor of the disease.

By April 15 – nine days before Mexican federal authorities of the regime of President Felipe Calderon acknowledged any problem at all – the local daily newspaper, Marcha, reported that a company called Carroll Ranches was “the cause of the epidemic.”

As the article mentions, Smithfield farms was an American company, but was fined by the EPA for violating several laws while dumping pig waste directly into local waterways. The EPA fine also required the company to build a waste-treatment facility.

While several 'conservative' commentators have worried themselves over illegal immigration, it seems that the H1N1 virus could be a direct result of the poor sanitation employed by large-scale agribusiness.



Peterkro
May 1, 2009, 02:32 AM
I don't know (there isn't enough information available) but articles like this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/28/swine-flu-intensive-farming-caroline-lucas

are food for thought.




"But as Dr Michael Greger, director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States, has pointed out, this is not the first time a triple hybrid human/bird/pig flu virus has been uncovered. The first was found in a North Carolina industrial pig farm in 1998, and within a year it had spread across the United States."

Ugg
May 1, 2009, 05:48 AM
All pandemics are a result of globalization.

The Plague was a result of imports from the Eurasian plateau. The spread of Cholera in the early 1800s is attributable to Britain's colonization of India. The 1918-19 flu was a result of America entering WWI.

While people are quick to blame CAFOs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming), and perhaps rightly so because they are truly disgusting places, the bigger blame lies with tourism that allows the disease to spread so quickly.

CAFOs are built on the idea of genetic homogeneity. All the pigs in those huge barns are closely related mostly as a result of artificial insemination. They are pumped full of antibiotics and the people who enter the barns must be germ free as the pigs are easily infected by human disease.

I question whether the manure lagoons are the cause. My guess is that someone working in the barns got infected and Smithfield is trying to cover it up.

All the whackos who are blaming illegal immigrants are clueless. It's tourists who are spreading it across the world.

kastenbrust
May 1, 2009, 09:34 AM
Since we're all going to die of swine flu, the recession is going to make us all homeless, global warming is going to cook us all and according to the Inca's the world is going to end in 2012, let me enlighten you guys a bit:

See Attached.

SydneyDev
May 1, 2009, 02:25 PM
The bird flu a few years ago came from ordinary peasants in China, so we won't get rid of these strange diseases by having smaller farms. Hygiene is the key.

Thomas Veil
May 3, 2009, 05:48 PM
You know, we could get rid of this swine flu epidemic almost instantly if we just pass some tax cuts.

Peterkro
May 3, 2009, 06:07 PM
You know, we could get rid of this swine flu epidemic almost instantly if we just pass some tax cuts.

Arf and a half.:D

Gelfin
May 3, 2009, 06:08 PM
You know, we could get rid of this swine flu epidemic almost instantly if we just pass some tax cuts on the top five percent.

FTFY. Wouldn't want people to think you were a socialist, would we? Nobody has any incentive to cure diseases if rich people pay taxes.