Oops - more on the Smithfield flu

[malaise]

http://www.narconews.com/Issue57/article3512.html
<snip>

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.

The so-called “swine flu” exploded because an environmental disaster simply moved (and with it, took jobs from US workers) to Mexico where environmental and worker safety laws, if they exist, are not enforced against powerful multinational corporations.

False mental constructs of borders – the kind that cause US and Mexican citizens alike to imagine a flu strain like this one invading their nations from other lands – are taking a long overdue hit by the current “swine flu” media frenzy. In this case, US-Mexico trade policy created a time bomb in Veracruz that has already murdered more than 150 Mexican citizens, and at least one child in the US, by creating a gigantic Petri dish in the form pig farms to generate bacon and ham for international sale.

None of that indicates that this flu strain was born in Mexico, but, rather, that the North American Free Trade Agreement created the optimal conditions for the flu to gestate and become, at minimum, epidemic in La Gloria and, now, Mexico City, and threatens to become international pandemic.

Welcome to the aftermath of “free trade.” Authorities now want you to grab a hospital facemask and avoid human contact until the outbreak hopefully blows over. And if you start to feel dizzy, or a flush with fever, or other symptoms begin to molest you or your children, remember this: The real name of this infirmity is “The NAFTA Flu,” the first of what may well emerge as many new illnesses to emerge internationally as the direct result of “free trade” agreements that allow companies like Smithfield Farms to escape health, safety and environmental laws.

[ourbluenation]

1. sonsabitches. oh and I love the new name for it. n/t

[malaise]

4. Here's a great read from Rolling Stone 2006

This was posted on DU back then.

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

This is some serious shit!!

[malletgirl02]

2. Smithfield Flu

That is the best name so far.

[annabanana]

5. I like NAFTA flue better.. because the risk crosses corporate lines as well.

Not having controls on corporations is dangerous for people everywhere.

[kestrel91316]

7. I vote we make it official: NAFTA flu.

[malaise]

10. OK done

NAFTA flu.

[kestrel91316]

13. Ok. Who volunteers to call CDC and WHO to inform them?

:rofl:

[malaise]

20. CDC has confirmed this

Link at #12

Now will they change the name? :D

add

[malaise]

6. I like NAFTA flu as well

but after you read that Rolling Stone article, you may stick with Smithfield.

[drmeow]

18. More people will recognize

and understand NAFTA Flu than Smithfield Flu.

[annabanana]

3. NAFTA FLU. . Yup.. That's an apt name...n/t

[Junkdrawer]

8. Local environmental laws - Global consequences

The future is now...

Payback is a bitch...

[malaise]

9. You mean the lack of environmental laws

and yes Payback is a bitch.

sp.

[TheWraith]

11. Again, there is NO EVIDENCE that this is even remotely true.

Nobody has provided evidence that it's anything more than rumor.

[glitch]

14. Deduction indicates it's a good place to start the investigation.

Don't you think?

[malaise]

15. Yes there is

From the link at #12

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in North Carolina.

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell ill.<5> A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple reassortment virus—a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus—that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.<6>

Within months, the virus had spread throughout the United States. Blood samples taken from 4,382 pigs across 23 states found that 20.5% tested positive for exposure to this triple hybrid swine flu virus by early 1999, including 100% of herds tested in Illinois and Iowa, and 90% in Kansas and Oklahoma.<7> According to the current analysis, it is from this pool of viruses that the current swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic material.<8>
------------

[G_j]

12. CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factorie

http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/swine_flu_virus_origin_1998_042909.html

Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories

April 30, 2009

Crowded conditions on factory farms create breeding grounds for new viruses. ©iStockphoto
By Michael Greger, M.D.

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in North Carolina.

This analysis, first released by Columbia University’s Center for Computation Biology, has now been reportedly confirmed by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Robert Webster, the director of the U.S. Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization, and considered the "godfather of flu research,"<1> is reported as saying "The triple reassortant in pigs seems to be the precursor."

Plaguing People and Pigs

The worst plague in human history was triggered by an H1N1 avian flu virus, which jumped the species barrier from birds to humans<2> and went on to kill as many as 50 to 100 million people in the 1918 flu pandemic.<3> No disease, war or famine ever killed so many people in so short a time. We then passed the virus to pigs, where it has continued to circulate, becoming one of the most common causes of respiratory disease on North American pig farms.<4>


For media interviews with Dr. Michael Greger, please contact Liz Bergstrom at [e-mail] or 301-258-1455. ©The HSUS
In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell ill.<5> A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple reassortment virus—a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus—that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.<6>

Within months, the virus had spread throughout the United States. Blood samples taken from 4,382 pigs across 23 states found that 20.5% tested positive for exposure to this triple hybrid swine flu virus by early 1999, including 100% of herds tested in Illinois and Iowa, and 90% in Kansas and Oklahoma.<7> According to the current analysis, it is from this pool of viruses that the current swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic material.<8>

..more..
*********


]http://sheepdrove.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/swine-flu-a-deadly-combination/

Swine Flu - a deadly combination

by Dr Michael Greger of the Humane Society of the United States
See also - Birdflubook .com

The H1N1 swine flu virus in North America currently concerning global public health officials is not the first triple hybrid human/bird/pig flu virus to be discovered. The first was discovered in a North Carolina factory farm in 1998. Since the 1918 pandemic, an H1N1 flu virus has circulated in pig populations, becoming one of the most common causes of respiratory disease on North American pig farms.

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North Carolina pig farm in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell ill. An aggressive H3N2 virus was discovered, the type of influenza that had been circulating in humans since 1968. Not only was this highly unusual—only a single strain of human virus had ever previously been isolated from an American pig population—but upon sequencing of the viral genome, researchers found that it was not just a double reassortment (a hybrid of human and pig virus, for example) but a never-before-described triple reassortment, a hybrid of three viruses—a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus.


<snip>

The year of emergence, 1998, was the year North Carolina’s pig population hit ten million, up from two million just six years before. At the same time, the number of hog farms was decreasing, from 15,000 in 1986 to 3,600 in 2000. How do five times more animals fit on almost five times fewer farms? By crowding about 25 times more pigs into each operation. In the 1980s, more than 85% of all North Carolina pig farms had fewer than 100 animals. By the end of the 1990s, operations confining more than 1,000 animals controlled about 99% of the state’s inventory. Given that the primary route of swine flu transmission is thought to be the same as human flu—via droplets or aerosols of infected nasal secretions —it’s no wonder experts blame overcrowding for the emergence of new flu virus mutants.

Starting in the early 1990s, the U.S. pig industry restructured itself after Tyson’s profitable poultry model of massive industrial-sized units. As a headline in the trade journal National Hog Farmer announced, “Overcrowding Pigs Pays—If It’s Managed Properly.” The majority of U.S. pig farms now confine more than 5,000 animals each. A veterinary pathologist from the University of Minnesota stated the obvious in Science: “With a group of 5,000 animals, if a novel virus shows up it will have more opportunity to replicate and potentially spread than in a group of 100 pigs on a small farm.”

The swine flu virus discovered this week in California and Mexico appears to be a quadruple reassortment virus incorporating genes from human and avian flu viruses as well as North American and European strains of swine flu. In Europe in 1993, a bird flu virus had adapted to pigs, acquiring a few human flu virus genes, and infected two young Dutch children, even displaying evidence of limited human-to-human transmission

...more..



http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-579-Food-Examiner~y2009m4d29-Flu-outbreak-linked-to-pig-farms

[malaise]

16. The one word that comes to mind is

BOOMERANG!!! Full fugging circle.

[Junkdrawer]

17. I posted the first link on it's own thread...

So many here said that the Hog Farm/Swine Flu connection had "no basis in science"...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5569987&mesg_id=5569987

[malaise]

19. Those numbers must be dwinding

by now

[Junkdrawer]

22. Regrouping for new talking points...

I'm sure.

[G_j]

21. the factory hog farming here in NC

has always creeped me out,

the connection is unsettling

[Wednesdays]

23. OMG...February?

:wow:

Is it too tinfoil hat-like to suspect a cover-up?

[Snazzy]

24. google maps link for Smithfield in Mexico

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=smithfield&mrt=kmlkmz&sll=19.392206,-97.276597&sspn=0.0253,0.038624&ie=UTF8&ll=19.596181,-97.284966&spn=0.101074,0.154495&t=h&z=13&msa=0&msid=103146870638217812582.00044f7a08e80810a6239

Wanted to see wtf. Look for the lagoons where they dump the shit and everything else imaginable. All over the place.

[malaise]

25. Thanks for that

:hi:

[Shireling]

26. More on NAFTA flu

See "Farming Pathogens"

http://farmingpathogens.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/the-nafta-flu/#more-131