Smithfield Swine Flu

Yes, organic food can be more expensive than mass produced chemicalized food found so in major grocery store chains across America. But what comes with that lower price? Lower quality food, risks to your health and exporting your dollars from your community to corporate bank accounts. Is cheaper food really cheaper? I guess if you do not consider the environmental aspect, your personal health or raping the local economy to be factors in your life than I guess it is cheaper. Support local organic family farmers...

The swine flu, now being renamed Mexican Flu because we don't want to offend Jews and Muslims alike. Why aren't we calling it Smithfield Pork flu? It has been traced to a plant in Vera Cruz run by pork giant and global mass polluter Smithfield Foods. You may remember Smithfield Foods from that great article in Rolling Stone Magazine called "Boss Hog". Here is a taste:

"Boss Hog America's top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat." by Jeff Tietz

Here's the whole article... you probably won't eat pork tonight or maybe even tomorrow after reading it:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters

Leave it to Amy Goodman and independant bloggers to report what the corporate run media does not want to say:

"Is Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork packer and hog producer, linked to the outbreak? Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raise 950,000 hogs per year, according to the company Web site.

On Friday, the U.S. disease-tracking blog Biosurveillance published a timeline of the outbreak containing this nugget, dated April 6 (major tip of the hat to Paula Hay, who alerted me to the Smithfield link on the Comfood listserv and has written about it on her blog, Peak Oil Entrepreneur):

Residents [of Perote] believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to "flu." However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen responsible for this outbreak."

to read the full story: http://www.truthout.org/042809K