As I wrote earlier this week, the virus formerly known as the swine flu (although the CDC continues to say that indeed the H1N1 strain does, as initially reported, contain swine, human and avian virus components) seems quite likely to have links to an industrial hog operation in the La Gloria community where the outbreak was believed to have started, although new information suggests that this strain of the flu may actually have origins in the US as well as Asia. As could be expected, Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork processor and co-owner of the La Gloria facility in question, came out early last weekend denying culpability in the outbreak.
With test results at the La Gloria facility painfully slow to emerge, I want to point out here that I'm not saying definitively that this flu is the result of Smithfield's practices, but I do tend to follow the reasoning of Tom Philpott of Grist, writing on the 28th:
The question now becomes: Did the outbreak that started in February and killed three kids involve swine flu-or was the 4-year-old boy's infection an isolated case? If not-if the La Gloria epidemic turns out to be ground zero of the infection-could the swine-flu outbreak have originated literally in the shadows of Granjas Carroll's hog confinements, and not have some tie to intensive hog farming? That's a question that health authorities have to vigorously pursue.
Today, Smithfield CEO Larry Pope sat down for an interview on CNBC to counter the rumors. From the interview:
POPE: Oh. You-- in fact, our-- our team that went down even this week, they have not been allowed on the farm yet. Because they haven't-- they haven't satisfied the quarantine period. So our own executives can't go on the farm until they've satisfied a quarantine. But I tell people when you visit our farms, I'm not concerned about you. I'm concerned about the pigs. I'm concerned about you contaminating the pigs. Not the pigs contaminating you.
BURNETT: And this is because pigs and humans, in terms of DN-- there--
there's a lot of similarities.POPE: There are.
BURNETT: That's the bottom line. So that's why diseases can go back and
forth.POPE: People-- people can give it to them. They can give-- they can
give some to people on-- on occasion. But this doesn't appear to be
that case at all. It doesn't appear to be there at all. And again, it
doesn't transmit through the meat.
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