DPM,

1. Pigs in the wild are not living in over-crowded conditions with daily human contact.

2. This flu (the one we are talking about)originally jumped from pig to human, not duck to human.

3. It's only a mix of those viruses because it jumped species so easily due to the human contact with animals through farming.

4. And how did those people come into conact with the birds in order for the avian flu to jump species?

May 8, 2009 -- 12:57AM, Shihulud wrote:

becca,

Consumers have a choice. You can buy it, or not. It's that easy. Once the corporation stops receiving money for the meat they will stop producing the meat. I don't have to sugar coat it with a long winded post. The validity of the logic speaks for it's self.

Not necessarily, take someone on benefits who has sqaut to live on, maybe they have not encountered the idea that veggieism/veganism is possible on a  budget, most folks i speak with think veggieism is some middle class privieldged lifestyle choice ..... now it isisn't their fault they think this,  it is society, meat and dairy propaganda and veggie and vegan groups who ponce around with rhetoric and nothign else on their lips.

this is not sugar coating this is reality for most folks --the corps perpetuate these myths, they produce the goods and make people think they need to buy them for the good of their children etc, mass producing them at a cheap price means few folks query it as they have no survival reason to do so .....

now maybe you like short, sharp and inaccurate, fair enough, personally i prefer informed, experienced based facts, and here the facts are you can not mindlessly blame consumers especailly in the current economic crisis you CAN however blame corps and smug veggie, vegan orgs with no connection to reality who do not address the economic needs and fears of folks or this immage of veggie and veganism as soem elite lifestyle choice.

The ONLY folks to blame for swine flu as it pertains to factory farms are those who run and own factory farms and slaughterhouses ...  blaming consumers is to ignore reality.

 So i repeat blaming consumers for swine flu is like blaming the pigs both are victims of mass industry and circumstance .. no amount of ignorance alters that.

May 9, 2009 -- 6:35PM, solfeggio wrote:

People who support the factory farm industry by buying and using and eating the body parts of pigs are fully as cupable as the people running the farms, and they ALL share the blame.  If people who eat bacon or spare ribs gets swine flu, it's their own fault.

No it is the fault of people whose practices leave them with little choice but to eat the often given away meat, of people who perpetuate a system which encourages ignorance at an ontological level, it is the fault of people with a commodification fetich ... it is not the fault of those who are as much victims of this exploitative corrupt manner of conducting industry be they pigs or humans. This is based on social fact not ignorant opinion.

In any case, the flu doesn't seem to be all that dangerous, and by no means a 'pandemic' as was once thought.  So the whole thing turned out to be a tempest in a teapot.

very true; apparently those who perpetuated the panic are called 'flubies' and have forums dedicated to tracking 'pandemics' or potential 'pandemics'

The ignorant human scumbags who insist on having their bacon and their pork roasts can continue to enjoy them at the expense of the pigs.  Since such people constitute the majority of the useless human race, I doubt the pig farms will close down any time soon.

odd how a pragraph dismissing humans who think differently to yourself as 'ignorant' demonstrates such a wealth of ignorance about this social situations itself *rolleyes*

yes factory farming is exploitative, yes animals are vastly exploited at the 'benefit' of humans HOWEVER to just blanket this situation in to black and white 'vegans good' everyone else 'evil scumbag' is simply ignoring the truth of the issues invovled; and no amounbt of bitter recriminationry tantrums alters this.

May 11, 2009 -- 11:11AM, d_p_m wrote:

There's also a false dichotomy being pushed here.  There are a lot more choices than "either factory farms or veganism".

this is very true; and is in itself dependent on folks having a realistic choice - never sits well with me judging people for things they have no realistic control over .... *shrug*