Four-year-old could hold key in search for source of swine flu outbreak

[steven johnson]

Source: The Guardian

Case confirmed in village in east Mexico where sixty per cent of residents fell ill

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City and Robert Booth
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 April 2009 20.37 BST

A Mexican village whose inhabitants were overwhelmed by an outbreak of respiratory illness starting in February has emerged as a possible source of the swine flu outbreak which has now spread across the world.

The state government of Veracruz in eastern Mexico has confirmed one case of swine flu in the village of La Gloria with the sufferer named locally as a four-year-old boy, Edgar Hernandez Hernandez. The federal government said tonight that he tested positive for the same strain of the virus which has claimed lives in Mexico.

Early today the US owner of an industrial pig production facility around 12 miles from La Gloria said it had found no clinical signs or symptoms of swine flu in its herd or Mexican employees. The world's biggest pig meat producer, Virginia-based Smithfield, said it is co-operating with the Mexican authorities' attempts to locate the possible source of the outbreak and will submit samples from its herds at its Granjas Carroll subsidiary to the University of Mexico for tests.

A La Gloria resident who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity yesterday described how illness swept through the village. "Some people started getting ill in February and an eight-month-old baby died," she said. "After that another baby died on 21 March. Suddenly most of the village got ill. It was weekend and the tiny clinic here was closed. The state health authorities then did send doctors and nurses to look after us, and give us medication. About 60% of the village were ill and we asked them what it was and they said it was a severe and atypical cold. We talked about influenza and they said that was impossible, that influenza had been eradicated from Mexico."


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/27/swine-flu-s...

---

Confinement facilities for the 'factory' production of lifestock meat and eggs has been touted as the best in efficiency and safety. So why so many disease outbreaks associated with confinement facilities?

It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature.

Swine Flu Outbreak -- Nature Biting Back at Industrial Animal Production?

Swine Flu and Factory Farming?

[Demeter]

1. Influenza Had Been Eradicated From Mexico?

Do tell! The Nobel Prize committee would love to hear how they did it.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. easy, they made it illegal

see?

[MidwestTransplant]

6. Yeah and Amaidinanutjob claims there are no gays in Iran. All you need to do is outlaw things and

they are gone.

[MADem]

22. Took the words right out of my mouth! nt

[hedgehog]

3. So the company claims the pigs could not have been sick

because they were all vaccinated. But presumably the vaccine would be ineffective against a mutated virus?

How many people believe that the US owner of the industrial pig operation closely monitors the health of its employees?

[Demeter]

7. Forget the Employees!

How many people believe that the US owner of the industrial pig operation closely monitors the health of its PIGS?

[amandabeech]

12. They're probably more interested in the pigs than they are in the locals.

What self-respecting multi-national wants to lose its investment?

This is very interesting, but I'm not really understanding how the avian component got into the mix in a pig CAFO.

[McCamy Taylor]

21. People who work with pigs have probably already been exposed to swine flu in the past.

Pigs always have influenza. It is a year round problem that gets worse in the winter. Pig handlers eventually catch it too. So, the folks who work there could have had mild infections that seemed more like colds from past infections and partial immunity. Only when it hit the general population did the swine flu encounter completely unimmune people.

Someone needs to check the vaccine which the pigs got. Could it have been the culprit?

[Igel]

23. There's a problem.

If the vaccine was effective against the virus in general, how did the pigs incubate the virus to allow it to mutate?

If the vaccine wasn't effective against the mutated virus, where did the virus mutate and how did those particular swine catch it?

[slackmaster]

4. Blame it all on some poor little kid in Mexico

What is our world coming to?

[valerief]

8. I'm surprised they didn't blame on the baby that died. nt

[kestrel91316]

9. The word "blame" is misplaced. This is referring to the INDEX CASE.

[slackmaster]

10. I read the piece and understand, I am being sarcastic

[krkaufman]

18. Actually, the article simply states that the child's test sample ...

... was the one that was sent to the US for testing, and tested positive (for swine flu). As for blame, the article seems to indicate that flies and a factory pig farm may be at the root of the outbreak.

[hedgehog]

5. From the second link:

To begin with, some swine CAFO's recover water from their waste lagoons and recycle it back into the animal housing, in order to wash out the barns while also cutting down on dwindling groundwater supplies (a particular concern in parts of Mexico, to be sure). But wildfowl routinely land in CAFO lagoons, where they can easily shed influenza virus into the water. This can also happen at facilities that use water from nearby ponds or rivers.
......

Pigs don't fly, so how could this happen? One explanation, again, is the birds. Every year, more than two million wild fowl fly up to 1,500 miles or more eastward across the Arctic Ocean from Asia to North America. There, the migrating Asian birds intersect with North American species along the great north-south "flyways" of the Americas. There is sharing of viruses between bird species from both continents, UI's Dr. Gray told me.

Last October, a team from the U.S. Geological Survey published a study in Molecular Ecology that found genetic evidence of (non-H5N1) flu viruses in northern pintail ducks in Alaska whose genes were more closely related to Asian bird flu strains than those in the Americas. "Although some previous research has led to speculation that intercontinental transfer of avian influenza viruses from Asia to North America via wild birds is rare, this study challenges that," Chris Franson, a USGS wildlife biologist, told reporters.

[madrchsod]

11. bingo....i think that`s the winner....

we do not do this in the usa. to enter any hog production facility in the usa one has to have "clearance" from the operate and wear protective covers on ones shoes.

recycling water as they do could lead to another problem that was discovered in Carolina`s when a hurricane burst hog waste ponds into the rivers. it was a disaster.

[Blaq Dem]

25. Republicans want us to live under these third-world standards

They're against any kind of regulations to keep the public safe in favor of profits for large corporations. It's as if they don't have an ounce of soul.

[Canuckistanian]

15. Wow, so one of those farms became breeding ground for flu variants

Pigs, humans and waterfowl all in the same area, each spreading and exchanging their quickly mutating viruses.

It's no wonder that conditions like these would be ideal conditions for infection with a super-virus.

[Tashca]

13. Interesting article

I vividly remember shortly after the signing of Nafta a major push by some large pork producers to build production facilities in Mexico. I had a good friend tour down there in the nineties and come back and tell stories of how massive facilities were being built anywhere they could find a suitable place..............I had forgotten about this....and have not heard in recent years how it worked out.
The reasons for doing this were blatant...cheaper labor and more lax environmental controls.....

These are the same people who are fighting tooth and nail to stop country of origin labeling....especially the stuff grown in Mexico....

The article also states:

"The company also noted that its joint ventures in Mexico routinely administer influenza virus vaccination to their swine herds and conduct monthly tests for the presence of swine influenza."


I can't think of a better way to build a super bug than what they claim to do here.....yes control the influenza you know.....but what about the influenza your vaccine doesn't control??

[Duer 157099]

14. Gosh, and here I thought that other thread was a joke!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[Sultana]

24. Oh God, lol

but

[mzmolly]

16. K and R.

[RufusTFirefly]

17. Monoculture: One great solution turned into two deadly problems

Wendell Berry was wise enough to point out the insanity of monocultures, which require chemical fertilizers for the crops and produce toxic lagoons of animal waste for the livestock.

Put pigs and crops together on the same farm and you have natural, non-chemical fertilizer for your crops and no toxic lagoons to make everyone sick.

But hey. That makes way too much sense. And more importantly it might put some chemical industries out of business.

[jberryhill]

19. "no clinical signs or symptoms of swine flu in its herd or Mexican employees"

That phrase kind of jumps off of the page, don't it?

[Reterr]

20. CAFOs and factory farming in that second li.eoj