Other blogsters have latched onto one possibility for a flu virus vector - flies that love manure lagoons near Mexican CAFOs. But they seem honest about the fact this is only an hypothesis at this point.
Pigs ARE prodigious defecators.
A vaguely related statistic to ponder from Stuffed and Starved.
In the US feedlots produce 300 million tons of manure a year.
As I recall this is about bovines, though maybe all feedlots and CAFOs - but whatever - that's a ton of s--- per person. Are our meat and dairy habits worth it?
1 comment:
Hi Phina- Stephen Stray here.
I haven't checked your blog in a while- thought you might be interested in this article: http://business.theage.com.au/business/world-business/swine-flu-may-be-a-lab-error-aussie-researcher-20090513-b2zh.html
Basically, a very well respected Evolutionary virologist has pointed out that the H1N1 "Swine 'flu" has characteristics of lab- adapted strains, such as might be found in vaccines. The WHO has largely pooh-poohed this, but the argument against this (that we don't have access to the wild viruses, but it must be one of them) isn't exactly watertight. Spare another thought for the piggies- word is that a pig farmer in the Canadian midwest brought a mild case of the virus back from a vacation in MExico- and all his hogs died!
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