Bringing home the bacon: Sustainability, hog farming and the swine flu
The power of smell to induce memories, to return to us things that are long past: the scent of baking blueberry muffins on a cool fall day, crisp fallen leaves as the weather turns cooler. Smells help us recall where we’ve been, who we’ve been. I became a vegetarian years ago, and no longer remember the taste of most meat, but the smell of cooking bacon produces a lingering nostalgia every time I catch a whiff.
But, as I read the news the past few days, I was reminded of a different pig-related odor that surrounds some places in the transformed countryside, a smell so thick that it is visible. Hogs. Lots of em. So many of them crowded into a ridiculously cramped place that the stench permeates the air for miles, the pollution from the industrial farms extends even farther, and the power of the hog lobby appears to know no bounds--including national ones. It’s no secret—or hasn’t been for years that industrial hog farming abuses the animals by crowding them into tiny pens, shooting them full of antibiotics to prevent diseases (and not coincidentally spurring on those wonderful antibiotic resistant viruses), but also sickens farm workers and residents of nearby communities.
Ah, for the days of Wilbur, when a pig could dream of breaking out into the wide open space of the farm and spiders were literate.
Now comes word that we might owe the genesis of this new strain of flu virus that contains genetic materials from avian, swine and human flu, to factory farms. For an explanation of how industrial pig farms and the global movement of pork products, may have provided the perfect nexus for this special virus, see David Kirby’s piece.
Animal abuse. Respiratory illnesses among workers and nearby community members. Antibiotic resistant infections. And now, possibly, genetic mutations of the flu virus. Bacon smells a little different these days. Need any more reasons to support sustainable food choices?
