David Cassuto
Excellent piece here regarding the pig CAFO/swine flu link and another one here about the inefficacy of the vaccine approach to prophylaxis. And yet another interesting piece here about the intelligence and social nature of pigs.
In light of these developments, let’s consider the American approach to pigs: mass confinement in facilities so devoid of stimulation for the animals that their tails are amputated to prevent them from biting each other. In addition to torturing the animals, these facilities incubate disease, which our government then attempts to treat not by addressing the cause (factory farms) but rather with a mass vaccination program that will almost certainly fail, and a PR campaign to rename swine flu, H1N1.
What will we learn from this logic-defying juxtaposition? If history is any predictor: nothing.
Filed under: animal welfare, factory farms, Uncategorized | Tagged: animal abuse, animal advocacy, animal ethics, animal law, animal suffering, animal welfare, animals, CAFOS, factory farms, farmed animals, H1N1, industrial farming, pigs, swine flu, swine flu vaccine, vaccination, vaccines |
Animal Blawg 
Ironically… the USDA just yesterday, just gave the pig people another 50 million dollars worth of “pork” bailout:
http://www.iowapork.org/Newsroom/NewsForProducers/USDAporkbuy/tabid/1504/Default.aspx
One couldn’t fabricate a more twisted story line: Government rescues industry to feed an obese population an unhealthy “product”, that causes pandemic illness and environmental destruction in the process. Not to mention the billions of innocent beings who are enslaved and slaughtered throughout… Sad – History may look back at these events with a predictable “I told you so” hindsight.
[…] Animal Blawg: The Pig, The CAFO, & The Flu (Links to some great stories about pigs, plus the cutest pig picture you’ve ever seen.) […]
Let’s hope history is less myopic than those who created it…