Is swine flu another biochem experimental disaster or just the result of lax health regulations?

In what could be just another example of the lax health enforcement regulations of the past Bush administration it appears that a poorly managed and contaminated pig farm in Mexico, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, may be at the epicenter of the recent Swine Flu epidemic. Smithfield Foods, SFD, is the leading processor and marketer of fresh pork and packaged meats in the United States, as well as the largest producer of hogs with sales of $12 billion annually.

The highly respected Biosurvelliance research has reported on April 24th a timeline of events for the Swine Flu in Mexico which leads back to April 6th where Veratect reported local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory disease outbreak in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico. Biosurvelliance is one of the many projects of IAO or Information Awareness Office which was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying information technology to counter asymmetric threats to national security.

It appears that the giant pork packer and hog producer, Smithfield Foods, may be linked to the Swine Flu outbreak which originated in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico that houses a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll which raises 950,000 hogs per year in deplorable conditions.

A 2007 Washington DC report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says misguided federal farm policies have encouraged the growth of massive confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, by shifting billions of dollars in environmental, health and economic costs to taxpayers and communities. As a result, CAFOs now produce most of the nation's beef, pork, chicken, dairy and eggs, even though there are more sophisticated and efficient farms in operation.

"CAFOs aren't the natural result of agricultural progress, nor are they the result of rational planning or market forces," said Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist in UCS's Food and Environment Program and author of the report. "Ill-advised policies created them, and it will take new policies to replace them with more sustainable, environmentally friendly production methods."

"CAFOs Uncovered: The Untold Costs of Confined Animal Feeding Operations" enumerates the policies that have allowed CAFOs to dominate U.S. meat and dairy production. For example, it found that from 1997 to 2005 taxpayer-subsidized grain prices saved CAFOs nearly $35 billion in animal feed, which comprises a large percentage of their supply costs. Cattle operations that raise animals exclusively on pasture land do not benefit from the subsidy.