Increasingly, as awareness grows about the health and environmental detriments of intensive animal farming, communities across the globe have organized in efforts to prevent new ones from being built.

Health hazards include links between industrialized pork production and increased rates of respiratory illness,as well as potentially lethal antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

In addition, runoff from livestock’s unregulated toxic waste is contaminating rivers, water supplies and entire ecosystems. Mr. Glen Koroluk of the advocacy organization Beyond Factory Farming has joined citizens in the province of Manitoba, Canada in support of their concerned endeavors.

With a factory farm operation containing some 12,000-24,000 pigs at any one time, communities find themselves divided between those fearing for their health and those invested in the profits.

However, while the human toll mounts, the expected economic gains often go unrealized, as Mr. Koroluk explained.

Glen Koroluk (M): There’s big promises made that these barns would just revitalize a region and a community, and bring in all these jobs, and save your school, etc. That hasn’t happened.

What we’ve seen here in Manitoba, for instance,a lot of the feed grain is imported, a lot of it is cheap corn coming from the US, so there wasn’t that big benefit to local farmers’ growing feed. And the job predictions: You don’t need a lot of people to take care of a few barns; it’s all automated; it’s all mechanized.
What a person mostly does is go inside and grabs all the dead pigs and throws them in the bin.

Supreme Master TV correspondent (F): The dead pigs?

Glen Koroluk (M): Well, yes, there’s a 10-15% mortality rate in hog barns because of the confined way they live. So the jobs didn’t materialize and communities didn’t grow and prosper, and in fact, it was an extraction of resources from communities. So instead of providing benefits, they extracted wealth from communities, and so that’s the model that stuck.

VOICE: The H1N1 swine flu virus is yet another byproduct of the crowding and filth associated with confined animal slaughter operations. The long-drawn spread of this illness worldwide is still not over, as infections and fatalities continue to rise, despite the majority of cases going unreported.

Egypt and India are among the few countries still announcing new deaths daily, with updated fatalities of 260 in Egypt and 1,238 in India. Health officials, meanwhile, are recommending vaccination to defend from an anticipated wave in the coming weeks.

However, recent and alarming cases of side effects include 17 Canadians who were sickened by the vaccine, with 4 who were diagnosed with the paralyzing Guillain-Barré syndrome while the remaining 13 were afflicted by a severe allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis.

Recently also, a British woman was diagnosed with a condition induced by the vaccine known as myasthenia gravis, which triggers paralysis and extreme pain in the face and legs.

It saddens us to know of the complications and tragedies that such animal-borne pandemics as the swine flu inflict in people’s lives. We thank Mr. Koroluk, Beyond Factory Farming and all individuals for their efforts to avert the social and economic costs of such animal raising practices, as we pray that through
new vegan choices, all societies may thrivein real safety and health.

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/press/releases/food-water-watch-urges-investigation-of-swine-flu-and-link-to-
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http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/pubs/reports/smithfield-foods
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