Officials from the CDC and USDA will likely arrive in Mexico soon to help investigate the deadly new influenza virus that managed to jump from pigs to people in a previously unseen mutated form that can readily spread among humans.
One of the first things they will want to look at are the hundreds of industrial-scale hog facilities that have sprung up around Mexico in recent years, and the thousands of people employed inside the crowded, pathogen-filled confinement buildings and processing plants.
Industry calls these massive compounds "confined animal feeding operations," or CAFOs (KAY-fohs), though most people know them simply as "factory farms." You have seen them before while flying: Long white buildings lined up in tightly packed rows of three, four or more. Within each confinement, thousands of pigs are restricted to indoor pens and grain-fed for market, while breeding sows are kept in small metal crates where they spend most of their lives pregnant or nursing piglets.
In the last several years, U.S. hog conglomerates have opened giant swine CAFOs south of the border, including dozens around Mexico City in the neighboring states of Mexico and Puebla. Smithfield Foods also reportedly operates a huge swine facility in the State of Veracruz. Many of these CAFOs raise tens of thousands of pigs at a time. Cheaper labor costs and a desire to enter the Latin American market are drawing more industrialized agriculture to Mexico all the time, wiping out smaller, traditional farms, which now account for only a small portion of swine production in Mexico. Entire article here.
Last week on NPR I heard an interview with Jeffrey Mason who wrote 'The Face On Your Plate'. So glad I am a vegan/vegetarian. He talked about baby pigs squealing for help from their mothers while they were being slaughtered. Just imagine the despair all factory farmed animals experience their entire existence. Can't be good to eat their meat.
A couple of years ago my husband visited Smithfield Meats with a client, Amoroso's Baking Company. They had been invited for a tour of the facility because Amoroso's were considering a co-advertising campaign with Smithfield. My husband came home and said it was one of the worst sights he had ever seen. Fortunately Lennie Amoroso agreed so there was no collaboration. Bottom line, Hot Productions will not take any clients that sell meat, period. Back in the 'old' days, my husband was co-founder of Sonder Levitt Advertising. One of the clients that they got off the ground was Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers. I always had a problem with it but then I had no say.
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