From www.avaaz.org
Evidence is emerging that traces swine flu to giant factory pig farms that are dirty, dangerous, and inhumane. Sign the petition to the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization to investigate and regulate these threats to our health:
No-one yet knows whether swine flu will become a global pandemic, but it is becoming clear where it came from – most likely a giant pig factory farm run by an American multinational corporation in Veracruz, Mexico.(1)
These factory farms are disgusting and dangerous, and they’re rapidly multiplying. Thousands of pigs are brutally crammed into dirty warehouses and sprayed with a cocktail of drugs — posing a health risk to more than just our food — they and their manure lagoons create the perfect conditions to breed dangerous new viruses like swine flu. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) must investigate and develop regulations for these farms to protect global health.
Big agrobusiness will try to obstruct and scuttle any attempts at reform, so we need a massive outcry that health authorities can’t ignore. Sign the petition below for investigation and regulation of factory farms and tell your friends and family and we will deliver it to the UN agencies. If we reach 200,000 signatures we will deliver it to the WHO in Geneva with a herd of cardboard pigs. For every 1000 petition signatures we will add a pig to the herd:
http://cdn.avaaz.org/en/swine_flu_pandemic
Last week the flu was all that we talked about — Mexico has been nearly paralysed and across the world leaders halted air travel, banned pork imports and initiated drastic controls to mitigate the spreading virus. As the threat shows signs of subsiding the question becomes where it came from and how we stop another outbreak.
Smithfield Corporation, the largest pig producer in the world whose farm is being fingered as the source of the H1N1 outbreak, denies any connection between their pigs and the flu and big agrobusiness worldwide pays huge sums of money for research to argue that biosafety is ensured in industrial hog production. But the WHO has been saying for years that ‘a new pandemic is inevitable’(2) and experts from the European Commission and the FAO have cautioned that the rapid move from small holdings to industrial pig production is in fact increasing the risk of development and transmission of disease epidemics. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn that scientists still do not know the extent that infectious compounds produced in factory farms affect human health.(3)
Studies abound of the horrific conditions endured by pigs in concentrated large-scale operations, and the devastating economic impact on small farmer communities of bloated large-scale operations.(4) Smithfield itself has already been fined $12.6m and is currently under another federal investigation in the US for toxic environmental damage from pig excrement lakes.(5)
But even with all of this damaging evidence, a combination of increased global meat consumption and a powerful industry motivated by profit at the cost of human health, means that instead of being shut down – these sickening factory farm operations are propagating around the world and we are subsidising them (6). In the wake of this swine flu threat, let’s hold industrial pig producers to account. Sign the petition for investigation and regulation: read more
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The real message for the world from this latest flu pandemic, is not the need for more vaccines, but the need to respect nature and accept our part in it. This starts with maintaining healthy soils, that is soil that is not overfarmed, covered in artificial fertiliser or pesticide but is maintained by use of organic fertiliser, and interaction with the animals that support it like birds, earth worms. Good soil produces nutritionally superior plants – fruit and vegetables, grasses for both us and animals to eat. To quote Paul Chek – ‘you need life to give life’ and this is just as true in the production of our food. Animals who are fed from life giving organic plants from organic life giving soil produce food to create healthy vital human beings. At each stage of the organic wheel of life we much respect the value of the soil the plants, the animals, ourselves and we will all derive the benefits.
My advice is to support the soil assocation, any local organic farmers, and make this whole food the majority of your diet and the result will be a healthy immune system, less need for any medical intervention or risk of catching flu!
Hi, good post. I have been woondering about this issue,so thanks for posting. I’ll definitely be coming back to your site.