There is a lot more to the swine flu outbreak than a virus and a vaccine:
The press in Mexico has been reporting that swine flu may have originated in the factory farming of pigs by Smithfield Foods (the world's largest pork packer and hog producer).
One week into the epidemic, not a single major American newspaper has reported even the possibility that factory farming may be implicated in swine flu.
AND -- When the Stimulus Bill ("Recovery Act") came to Congress, it included almost a billion dollars to prepare for a possible flu pandemic. But Karl Rove organized Republicans to take this money out of the bill,
There is a reason that we speak of people "hogging " everything for themselves, or eating "piggishly." It is about ignoring the needs of others and seeking to gobble up the world's abundance for the benefit of a few.
It is a remarkable irony that this kind of piggish politics may have helped create the swine flu epidemic ---
The Vera Cruz-based paper La Marcha wrote this headline: "Granjas Carroll, causa de epidemia en La Gloria."
http://www.marcha.com.mx/...
The Mexico City daily La Jornada has also made the link -- saying that the Mexican health agency IMSS has acknowledged that the original carrier for the flu could be the "clouds of flies" that multiply in the Smithfield subsidiary's manure lagoons.
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/...
But it is not only pig farming that can be danerous:
Almost a year ago, when the Postville debacle showed the destructiveness of present immigration policy, The Shalom Center also pointed out that the oppressive behavior of the Rubashkin owners toward both workers and animals was based on the effort to make super-profits out of factory farming. The torture of animals and the oppression of workers followed as a matter of course.
Factory farming of cattle also produces methane, a planet-heating gas even more potent than CO2. (It causes 1/7 of the global-scorching effect, according to the UN's Food & Agriculture Administration.)
So from many standpoints -- human health, climate healing, decent treatment of animals, and justice for workers --- we should be reducing meat consumption and restoring humane farming.
Shalom, salaam, peace -
Arthur