Chile confirms swine flu in birds

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Turkeys in Chile have been infected with the H1N1 pandemic swine flu, news services have confirmed. The good news is that the effects on the turkeys are mild; they will be processed as usual for their meat and should be safe to eat.

But the spread of swine flu to birds is a step we have not wanted to see, particularly at this early stage of the game before more humans have had the chance to develop an immunity to the disease themselves. Once the disease becomes widespread in birds, it would seem to be only a matter of time before a more virulent strain emerges that is increasingly fatal to humans. Avian flu has consistently been the most dangerous to humans, and having a strain of flu that has already started making the rounds in humans also spread to birds does not promise good things for the future.

Chile’s health ministry said earlier today that it ordered a quarantine of two turkey farms outside the port city of Valparaiso. Health Spectator has been unable so far to determine if there are pig farms in the area, but we suspect there are. Modern factory farming practices tend to cluster pig and poultry farms in close proximity to each other, and Chile has long been a member of the factory farming club. We have also located photographs of a huge Chilean pig farm operation with a caption indicating that it is owned by Super Pollo (a company name that means Super Chicken).

As we noted in a story published earlier today (Factory farming is key to swine flu epidemic, below) factory farming practices have created a global situation in which new diseases evolve and spread more rapidly than previously possible, endangering both human and livestock populations.

Also earlier today, University of Missouri agricultural economist Ronald L. Plain said that since April, when the flu outbreak was first recognized in Mexico, hog producers have lost $500 million in revenue just because of the monniker “swine flu.”


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Meningitis death toll tops 2,000

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

While swine flu captures most of the health-related headlines in the U.S., most Americans are probably not aware that a meningitis outbreak in Nigeria has already claimed over 2,000 lives. (more…)


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WHO says swine flu pandemic might infect 2 billion

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

The World Health Organization reported today that should the current North American swine flu outbreak become a pandemic, it might affect a third of the world’s population. WHO’s Keiji Fukuda, an influenza expert, said that while there was no predicting at this point what will actually happen, a pandemic would probably infect about 2 billion people. To become a pandemic and thereby move the WHO’s health alert status for the disease outbreak to level 6—the top level—it would have to spread to another region of the world. (more…)


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