THE ONE PIG IN AFGHANISTAN

[spectre]

http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/the-one-pig-in-afghanistan/

IS NAMED ‘PIG’
http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/articleslideshow?articleId=USTRE5444XQ20090505&channelName=lifestyleMolt#a=1
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5444XQ20090505
Afghanistan’s only pig quarantined in flu fear
BY Golnar Motevalli / May 5, 2009

Afghanistan’s only known pig has been locked in a room, away from
visitors to Kabul zoo where it normally grazes beside deer and goats,
because people are worried it could infect them with the virus
popularly known as swine flu. The pig is a curiosity in Muslim
Afghanistan, where pork and pig products are illegal because they are
considered irreligious, and has been in quarantine since Sunday after
visitors expressed alarm it could spread the new flu strain. “For now
the pig is under quarantine, we built it a room because of swine
influenza,” Aziz Gul Saqib, director of Kabul Zoo, told Reuters.
“We’ve done this because people are worried about getting the flu.”
Worldwide, more than 1,000 people have been infected with the virus,
according to the World Health Organization, which also says 26 people
have so far died from the strain. All but one of the deaths were in
Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak. There are no pig farms in
Afghanistan and no direct civilian flights between Kabul and Mexico.
“We understand that, but most people don’t have enough knowledge. When
they see the pig in the cage they get worried and think that they
could get ill,” Saqib said.

The pig was a gift to the zoo from China, which itself quarantined
some 70 Mexicans, 26 Canadians and four Americans in the past week,
but later released them. Some visitors were not concerned about the
fate of the pig and said locking it away was probably for the best.
“Influenza is quite contagious and if it passes between people and
animals then there’s no need for the pig to be here,” zoo visitor
Farzana said. Shabby and rundown, Kabul Zoo is a far cry from zoos in
the developed world, but has nevertheless come a long way since it
suffered on the front line of Afghanistan’s 1992-4 civil war.
Mujahideen fighters then ate the deer and rabbits and shot dead the
zoo’s sole elephant. Shells shattered the aquarium. One fighter
climbed into the lion enclosure but was immediately killed by Marjan,
the zoo’s most famous inhabitant. The man’s brother returned the next
day and lobbed a hand grenade at the lion leaving him toothless and
blind. The zoo now holds two lions who replaced Marjan who died of old
age in 2002 as well as endangered local leopards. In all, it houses 42
species of birds and mammals and 36 types of fish and attracts up to
10,000 visitors on weekends.

THE OTHER WAS KILLED BY A BEAR
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iF09Q0TbkymePnFrYg3O3KRlA31Q
Afghanistan’s only pig locked up: official / May 6, 2009

Afghanistan’s only known pig has been taken off display at Kabul Zoo
and locked away to avoid panic among visitors who may be worried about
swine flu, the zoo’s director said Wednesday. “We put the pig
temporarily in his winter house under quarantine because of swine
influenza,” director Aziz Gul Saqib told AFP. “Most people don’t have
much knowledge about swine influenza and seeing a pig, they panic that
they will be infected. “Just to address our visitors’ concerns, we
have put the pig away from public view for the past two days,” he
said. Saqib said he had sent e-mails to other international zoos to
find out if they had also put their pigs in quarantine because of
health fears. The WHO has officially backed away from calling the
illness swine flu, going instead for influenza A (H1N1) to dispel the
impression that it can be caught from eating pork products or through
contact with pigs. According to latest figures from the world body,
1,490 people around the globe have been infected by the flu. In
Mexico, the epicentre of the outbreak, 29 people have died. But there
have been no confirmed cases of swine influenza in Afghanistan and the
country does not have any direct flights with nations affected.

The interned animal — known simply as “Pig” — was one of two given to
Afghanistan by China in 2002, months after the ouster of the hardline
Taliban regime, to help reestablish the zoo after it was destroyed
during civil war. However, the other pig — and their offspring — were
killed in an attack by a bear. Despite being the only pig, it was not
too lonely, Saqib said. “The pig made friends with a goat and was
happy sticking to the goat in the enclosure, where some other goats
and deer were on show for visitors,” Saqib said. The zoo is undergoing
reconstruction but is basic, with a small variety of animals, most in
poor conditions. It was on one of the frontlines of the 1992-1996
civil war between anti-Soviet factions that destroyed more than half
of Kabul and killed up to 80,000 civilians in the city. It is illegal
for Afghans to eat pork in the strictly Islamic country and there are
no pig farms or any of the animals in the wild. Some pork products
enter the country for the thousands of foreigners here, including
soldiers fighting a Taliban-led insurgency.

ZERO PIGS IN EGYPT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/health/01egypt.html
Culling Pigs in Flu Fight, Egypt Angers Herders and Dismays U.N.
BY Nadim Audi / April 30, 2009

Egypt has begun forcibly slaughtering the country’s pig herds as a
precaution against swine flu, a move that the United Nations described
as “a real mistake” and one that is prompting anger among the
country’s pig farmers. The decision, announced Wednesday, is already
adding new strains to the tense relations between Egypt’s majority
Muslims and its Coptic Christians. Most of Egypt’s pig farmers are
Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to
punish them economically.

According to World Health Organization officials, the decision to kill
pigs has no scientific basis. “We don’t see any evidence that anyone
is getting infected from pigs,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World
Health Organization’s assistant director general. “This appears to be
a virus which is moving from person to person.” The outbreak has been
dubbed swine flu — now officially called influenza A(H1N1) — because
scientists believe it started in pigs, but they do not know if that
was recently or years ago. The name change was designed to allay fears
about pigs and eating pork.

Egypt has not reported any cases of the new virus that has hit 11
other nations, but the country has been hard hit by avian flu. The
great majority of Egyptians are Muslim and do not eat pork because of
religious restrictions, but about 10 percent of the population is
Coptic Christian. As a result, Egyptian pig farmers are overwhelmingly
Christian. And although some of the country’s Christians are middle
class or wealthy, the Christian farmers are generally poor.

On Thursday, several urban pig farmers in Cairo said they see the
government’s decision as just another expression of Egyptian Muslims’
resentment against Christians. Last year, there were several violent
incidents that some believed were aimed at Christians, including the
kidnapping and beating of monks. The Egyptian government denied the
incidents had sectarian overtones, saying they were each part of other
disputes, including a fight over land.

Barsoum Girgis, a 26-year-old pig farmer, lives in a poor
neighborhood, Manshiet Nasser, built along the Mukatam cliffs on the
eastern end of the city where most of the ramshackle, red-brick
buildings were built illegally. Mr. Girgis makes his living through a
combination of raising pigs and collecting garbage — two professions
that are often tied together in a city where garbage collection can be
an informal affair and where poor farmers rely on food scraps to feed
their livestock.

He wakes up every morning around 4 a.m. to collect garbage around the
city. When he gets back to Manshiet Nasser, at around 9 a.m., he sorts
the trash, putting aside what can be sold at the city’s booming scrap
markets and what he can use as pig feed. “The government here is going
after our livelihood,” he said, nervously playing with a wooden cross
he wears around his neck. “These pigs are perfectly healthy. How am I
going to feed my children and send them to school without my
livestock?” Mr. Girgis lives with his extended family, about 30
people, in the first two floors of a building that leans against a
cliff. His 60 small pigs live on the ground floor. They have dark,
furry skin, and their squeals can be heard a block away from Mr.
Girgis’ home. Many of Cairo’s pig farmers live in similar conditions,
sharing their small spaces in the teeming city with their animals.

After international health officials criticized Egypt’s decision to
kill about 300,000 pigs, the Agriculture Ministry’s head of infectious
diseases, Saber Abdel Aziz Galal, explained that the cull was “a
general health measure,” according to Agence France-Presse. “It is
good to restructure this kind of breeding in good farms, not on
rubbish,” the agency quoted him as saying. “We will build new farms in
special areas, like in Europe,” he said. “Within two years the pigs
will return, but we need first to build new farms.”

It remains unclear if the government will compensate the farmers for
their losses. The Health Ministry originally said the farmers would be
paid, but after many in Parliament disagreed, the ministry appeared to
back down. Some in Cairo, anxious over the reports of swine flu agree,
with the government’s move. “Now we know there is a reason God bans
pigs: they spread sickness” said Mohsen Hamady, a 50-year-old
accountant who was sipping tea after work in a Cairo tea house.

But many pig farmers say they do a valuable service for the rest of
Cairo that will be recognized only if they stop picking up the trash.
“If they take away our pigs, why would we go collect their garbage
every morning?” said Marcos Shalab, a 40-year-old pig farmer in
Manshiet Nasser. Mr. Girgis echoed this feeling. “We are Christian,
and we are the underclass, so it’s very easy to go after us. But this
city relies on us to process its waste. It relies on the pigs.”

PATIENT ZERO?
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/04/29/search-for-swine-flus-patient-zero-leads-to-mexican-boy/
Search for Swine Flu’s Patient Zero Leads to Mexican Boy / April 29,
2009

A 5-year-old boy in Mexico is at the center of detective work around
the question of who was the first human to come down with swine flu.
Édgar Hernández, pictured, has a winning demeanor: He’s described in
news accounts as a playful boy with quite a grin. But his mother is
worried about the notoriety he may gain if he is, indeed, Patient
Zero. “I don’t have words, I don’t have answers,” Édgar’s mother,
María del Carmen Hernández, said as she cried under a portrait of
Jesus in her living room, as described by the Washington Post. “I feel
terrible about all of this, because the people are thinking that this
was all my son’s fault. I don’t think this is anyone’s fault.”

Indeed, there aren’t clear answers. Édgar lives in La Gloria, Mexico,
where many residents got sick in late March or early April. He ran a
high fever and complained of headache and pains, but he recovered, the
WSJ reports. When the CDC tested samples from La Gloria, they came
back negative, except for the one that belonged to Édgar.

In addition to the differing results among residents, a confusing
issue is that Édgar developed flulike symptoms after some other
residents of La Gloria did, the Washington Post reports . He hasn’t
infected his family, even though he shares a bed with them. Plus, he
showed symptoms several days after two patients in California did.
It’s possible the disease actually started in California and somebody
brought it to Mexico. The strain of flu also appears to be Eurasian in
origin, WaPo adds.

Meantime, some residents of La Gloria are pointing to a major pig farm
nearby. But Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, which owns the farm in a
joint venture with a Mexican firm, told the WSJ that the company
routinely tests its swine herds for disease, including influenza, and
that “this variant has never presented itself in any of our herds,”
including in Mexico.

BREEDING
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/are-factory-farms-to-blame-for-swine-flu.php
Are Factory Farms to Blame for Swine Flu?
by Pablo Paster / 04.30.09

What Is Swine Flu?
First of all let me clarify that Swine Flu, or Swine Influenza Virus
(SIV), is a strain of influenza that is endemic to pigs. You may
recall the talk about the H5N1 strain last year, which refers to a
human version of avian influenza. Luckily the H5N1 strain has, so far,
not been transmissible from human to human, but H1N1 (swine flu) has.
In a few past cases, such as in Wisconsin in 1988, swine flu was
contracted by humans working in the swine industry, but the virus’
ability to spread from human to human was limited and the outbreak
quickly disappeared. An outbreak in 1976 resulted in one third of the
US population getting vaccinated against swine flu, but the vaccine
ended up killing more people than the swine flu itself. However, back
in 1918, the “Spanish Flu” believed to be a strain of swine influenza
swept around the world, infecting one third of the world’s population
and causing 50 million deaths.

The latest numbers on the US cases of H1N1 are available from the CDC.
When compared to the CDC’s estimate of annual influenza-related deaths
of 36,000 in the US, it seems like the news media and public health
systems are making a big deal out of nothing. But the current
overabundance of caution is well justified considering that little is
known about the current strain’s mortality rate, infectiousness,
resistance to medication, etc. The 2009 outbreak could fizzle away and
be forgotten like Y2K or it could grow to “Spanish Flu” proportions.

But Are Factory Farms To Blame?
It is now widely believed, but not confirmed, that Édgar Hernández, a
5 year old Mexican boy from the village of La Gloria, is “Patient 0,”
or the first person to have contracted the current swine flue strain.
Édgar has since fully recovered and has been visited by the global
media, including CNN’s Sanjay Gupta. While the villagers maintain that
the source of the outbreak are the unsanitary conditions produced by a
nearby factory hog farm, the farm’s owners, Virgina-based Smithfield
Foods maintains that none of its animals have tested positive for the
strain. The allegations against Smithfield may turn out to be false,
but may be based in legitimate health concerns by the villagers, 450
of whom say that they are suffering respiratory problems due to the
farm.

If the source of the current outbreak turns out to not be this
particular factory farm, suspicion will undoubtedly fall on another
factory farm. Bob Martin, senior officer at the Pew Environment Group
and a member of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal
Production believes that the current hog production system in the U.S.
(and elsewhere) can act as a breeding ground for infections, including
swine flu. The close proximity with which animals are held at these
farms can encourage the spread of diseases such as swine flu. To
counteract this, animals are given antibiotics, which make their way
into our food, end up in factory effluent, and contribute to
antibiotic resistant diseases. One article in the Daily Mail addresses
this issue and talks specifically about the increase in drug resistant
salmonella, campylobacter, MSRA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus
aureus), and E. Coli. It is important to note that, unlike salmonella
and E. coli, swine flu is not transmitted by eating pork and the USDA
and CDC are emphasizing that eating pork is completely safe.

Finally, agricultural workers, who serve as a “bridging population,”
can spread disease from the animals in their care and to the broader
community. According to Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim Deputy Director for
CDC Science and Public Health, American cases were found to be made up
of “an unusually mongrelised mix of genetic sequences” from four
different flu viruses – North American swine influenza, North American
avian influenza, human influenza, and swine influenza virus typically
found in Asia and Europe. So dense populations of pigs breed swine
influenza, overuse of antibiotics breeds drug resistant strains, and
close contact with humans creates hybridized strains of human and
swine influenza genes that can be passed from swine to humans and
between humans.

GENETICS
http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/swine_flu_virus_origin_1998_042909.html
CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories
By Michael Greger, M.D. / May 3, 2009

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led
to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat. A
preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human
cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene
segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since
1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in
North Carolina.

This genetic fingerprint, first released by Columbia University’s
Center for Computation Biology and the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton,[1] has now been reportedly confirmed by researchers at the
University of Edinburgh, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and
virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines
branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr.
Robert Webster, the director of the U.S. Collaborating Center of the
World Health Organization, and considered the “godfather of flu
research,”[2] is reported as saying “The triple reassortant in pigs
[first discovered in the U.S. in 1998] seems to be the precursor.”

Plaguing People and Pigs
The worst plague in human history was triggered by an H1N1 avian flu
virus, which jumped the species barrier from birds to humans[3] and
went on to kill as many as 50 to 100 million people in the 1918 flu
pandemic.[4] No disease, war or famine ever killed so many people in
so short a time. We then passed the virus to pigs, where it has
continued to circulate, becoming one of the most common causes of
respiratory disease on North American pig farms.[5]

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North
Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell
ill.[6] A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a
human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By
the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird
flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple
reassortment virus—a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird
virus—that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.[7]

Within months, the virus had spread throughout the United States.
Blood samples taken from 4,382 pigs across 23 states found that 20.5%
tested positive for exposure to this triple hybrid swine flu virus by
early 1999, including 100% of herds tested in Illinois and Iowa, and
90% in Kansas and Oklahoma.[8] According to the current analysis,
published April 30 in the journal of the European Centre for Disease
Prevention and Control, it is from this pool of viruses that the
current swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic
material.[9]

Tracing the Origins of Today’s Virus
Since the progenitor of the swine flu virus currently threatening to
trigger a human pandemic has now been identified, it is critical to
explore what led to its original emergence and spread. Scientists
postulate that a human flu virus may have starting circulating in U.S.
pig farms as early as 1995, but “by mutation or simply by obtaining a
critical density, caused disease in pigs and began to spread rapidly
through swine herds in North America. [emphasis added]“[10] It is
therefore likely no coincidence that the virus emerged in North
Carolina, the home of the nation’s largest pig production operation.
North Carolina has the densest pig population in North America and
reportedly boasts more than twice as many corporate pig mega-factories
as any other state.[11]

The year of emergence, 1998, was the year North Carolina’s pig
population hit ten million, up from two million just six years earlier.
[12] Concurrently, the number of pig farms was decreasing, from 15,000
in 1986 to 3,600 in 2000.[13] How can five times more animals be
raised on almost five times fewer farms? By crowding about 25 times
more pigs into each operation.

In the 1980s, more than 85% of all North Carolina pig farms had fewer
than 100 animals. By the end of the 1990s, operations confining more
than 1,000 animals controlled about 99% of the state’s pig population.
[14] Given that the primary route of swine flu transmission is thought
to be the same as human flu—via droplets or aerosols of infected nasal
secretions[15]—it’s no wonder experts blame overcrowding for the
emergence of new flu virus mutants.

Intensive Crowding and Long-Distance Transport
Starting in the early 1990s, the U.S. pig industry restructured itself
after Tyson’s profitable chicken model of massive industrial-sized
units. As a headline in the trade journal National Hog Farmer
announced, “Overcrowding Pigs Pays—If It’s Managed Properly.”[16] The
majority of U.S. pig farms now confine more than 5,000 animals each. A
veterinary pathologist from the University of Minnesota stated the
obvious in Science: “With a group of 5,000 animals, if a novel virus
shows up it will have more opportunity to replicate and potentially
spread than in a group of 100 pigs on a small farm.”[17]

In a study published in 2008 in the journal Zoonoses and Public Health
investigated the relationship between farm size and risk of Eurasian
lineage swine flu infection. The researchers concluded: “Pigs from
larger farms (>5000 SPP [standing pig population]) appeared to have a
significantly higher risk for SI [swine influenza] H1N1 infection
compared to pigs originating from smaller farms. The odds of H1N1 in
pigs from those farms were five times more as compared to small farms
(i.e. <1000 SPP).” The same result was found for another strain of
swine flu: “Pigs from bigger farms (i.e. SPP 1000–5000 and >5000) were
about twice and nine times more likely, respectively, to have SI H3N2
infection as compared to pigs from farms with SPP <1000.”[18] A recent
study of pig farms in North America similarly concluded: “Increasing
the number of finishers [fattening pigs] by 1000 increased by 4.4 the
adjusted odds of a finisher herd being positive [for classic H1N1
swine flu].”[19]

Researchers also found that when farms were packed close together, as
is increasingly the case in high pig-density areas of North America
and Europe, pigs appeared to have up to 16.7 times the odds of testing
positive for swine flu. “Close location,” they write, “enhances the
possibility for windborne, personnel, and fomites disease transmission
from one farm to another.”[20] The “spread of pig slurry [urine and
feces]” on nearby land may also play a role.[21]

This new research confirms earlier work suggesting that increasing the
number of pigs per pen or per municipality can significantly increase
swine flu risk. A 2002 review found 26 studies linking respiratory
disease with herd size.[22] A higher number of pigs per municipality
“may facilitate airborne transmission [of swine flu] between the
herds” and crowding more pigs per pen “allows more opportunities for
direct nose-to-nose contact or for aerosol spread of the [swine flu]
virus between penmates. Furthermore, a large number of pigs per pen
creates physiological stress, which in turn can alter the immune
system and predispose pigs to infection.”[23]

Dr. Robert Webster, one of the world’s leading experts of flu virus
evolution, blames the emergence of the 1998 virus on the “recently
evolving intensive farming practice in the USA, of raising pigs and
poultry in adjacent sheds with the same staff,” a practice he calls
“unsound.”[24] North Carolina is also one of the nation’s largest
poultry producers, slaughtering nearly three-quarters of a billion
chickens[25] and confining enough hens to produce nearly 3 billion
eggs.[26]

Once the new viral mutant appeared in 1998, the rapid dissemination
across the country has been blamed on long-distance live animal
transport.[27] In the United States, pigs travel coast to coast. They
can be bred in North Carolina, fattened in the corn belt of Iowa, and
slaughtered in California.[28] While this may reduce short-term costs
for the pork industry, the highly contagious nature of diseases like
influenza (perhaps made further infectious by the stresses of
transport) needs to be considered when calculating the true cost of
long-distance live animal transport.

“A Recipe for Disaster”
The remaining two gene segments of the H1N1 swine flu virus now
spreading in human populations around the world appear to come from a
swine flu viral lineage circulating in Eurasia, where similar
conditions may be to blame. “Influenza [in pigs] is closely correlated
with pig density,” said a European Commission-funded researcher
studying the situation in Europe.[29] As such, Europe’s rapidly
intensifying pig industry has been described in Science as “a recipe
for disaster.”[30] Some researchers have speculated that the next
pandemic could arise out of “Europe’s crowded pig barns.”[31] In
Europe in 1993, a bird flu virus had adapted to pigs, acquiring a few
human flu virus genes and infected two young Dutch children,
displaying evidence of limited human-to-human transmission.[32]

The European Commission’s agricultural directorate warns that the
“concentration of production is giving rise to an increasing risk of
disease epidemics.”[33] Concern over epidemic disease is so great that
Danish laws have capped the number of pigs per farm and put a ceiling
on the total number of pigs allowed to be raised in the country.[34]

No such limit exists in the United States or in Mexico. The fact that
one of the first confirmed human cases of swine flu appeared in close
proximity to the largest pig factory in Mexico, which slaughters
nearly a million pigs a year (out of a country-wide total of 15
million), may not have been a coincidence. In Vector-Borne and
Zoonotic Diseases, scientists from the University of Iowa Center for
Emerging Infectious Diseases published the 2006 article “Confined
Animal Feeding Operations as Amplifiers of Influenza,” in which they
concluded, “A human influenza epidemic due to a new virus could be
locally amplified by the presence of confined animal feeding
operations in the community.”

Warnings Unheeded
The public health community has been warning about the risks posed by
factory farms for years. More than five years ago, in 2003, the
American Public Health Association, the largest and oldest association
of public health professionals in the world, called for a moratorium
on factory farming.[35] In 2005, the United Nations urged that “[g]
overnments, local authorities and international agencies need to take
a greatly increased role in combating the role of factory-farming,”
which, they said, combined with live animal markets, “provide ideal
conditions for the [influenza] virus to spread and mutate into a more
dangerous form.”[36]

Last April, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production
released its final report. The prestigious, independent panel chaired
by a former Kansas Governor and including a former U.S. Secretary of
Agriculture, former Assistant Surgeon General, and the Dean of the
University of Iowa College of Public Health, concluded that
industrialized animal agriculture posed “unacceptable” public health
risks: “Due to the large numbers of animals housed in close quarters
in typical [industrial farm animal production] facilities there are
many opportunities for animals to be infected by several strains of
pathogens, leading to increased chance for a strain to emerge that can
infect and spread in humans.”[37]

Specific to the veal crate-like metal stalls that confine breeding
pigs like those on the North Carolina factory from which the first
hybrid swine flu virus was discovered in North America, the Pew
Commission asserted that “[p]ractices that restrict natural motion,
such as sow gestation crates, induce high levels of stress in the
animals and threaten their health, which in turn may threaten human
health.”[38] Unfortunately we don’t tend to “shore up the levees”
until after the disaster, but now that we know swine flu viruses can
evolve to efficiently transmit human-to-human we need to follow the
Pew Commission’s recommendations to abolish extreme confinement
practices like gestation crates as they’re already doing in Europe,
and to follow the advice of the American Public Health Association to
declare a moratorium on factory farms.

A “Reservoir of Viruses” in the U.S.
With massive concentrations of farm animals within whom to mutate,
these new swine flu viruses in North America seem to be on an
evolutionary fast track, jumping and reassorting between species at an
unprecedented rate.[39] This reassorting, Webster’s team concludes,
makes the 65 million strong U.S. pig population an “increasingly
important reservoir of viruses with human pandemic potential.”[40] “We
used to think that the only important source of genetic change in
swine influenza was in Southeast Asia,” said Christopher Olsen, a
molecular virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Now, “we
need to look in our own backyard for where the next pandemic may
appear.”[41]

{Dr. Michael Greger is director of public health and animal
agriculture for The Humane Society of the United States.}

References
[1]Trifonov V, et al. 2009. The origin of the recent swine influenza A
(H1N1) virus infecting humans. Eurosurveillance 14(17).
http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=19193.
[2] Council on Foreign Relations. 2005. Session 1: Avian flu-where do
we stand? Conference on the Global Threat of Pandemic Influenza,
November 16. http://cfr.org/publication/9230/council_…uenza_session_1.html.
[3] Belshe RB. 2005. The origins of pandemic influenza-lessons from
the 1918 virus. New England Journal of Medicine 353(21):2209-11.
[4] Johnson NPAS, Mueller J. Updating the accounts: global mortality
of the 1918–1920 “Spanish” influenza pandemic. Bull Hist Med.
2002;76:105–15.
[5] Zhou NN, Senne DA, Landgraf JS, et al. 1999. Genetic reassortment
of avian, swine, and human influenza A viruses in American pigs.
Journal of Virology 73:8851-6. http://birdflubook.org/resources/ZHOU8851.pdf.
[6] Wuethrich B. 2003. Chasing the fickle swine flu. Science
299:1502-5. http://birdflubook.org/resources/WUETHRICH1502.pdf.
[7] Zhou NN, Senne DA, Landgraf JS, et al. 1999. Genetic reassortment
of avian, swine, and human influenza A viruses in American pigs.
Journal of Virology 73:8851-6. http://birdflubook.org/resources/ZHOU8851.pdf.
[8] Webby RJ, Swenson SL, Krauss SL, Gerrish PJ, Goyal SM, and Webster
RG. 2000. Evolution of swine H3N2 influenza viruses in the United
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