Daily Juice Foods

“We seem to have got away with it this time. The swine flu turned out not to be a global killer, at least not in this first go-round. But we have had a fright, and maybe we should learn something from it.

In 1994, 10 per cent of American pigs lived out their brief lives in vast factory farms. Only seven years later, in 2001, 72 per cent did. The percentage is even higher today – and it’s now known the virus that caused the outbreak in Mexico is a direct descendant of one that was first identified on an industrial-scale pig-raising facility in North Carolina in 1998.

It’s not only pigs. Fewer than 300 people have died from the “bird flu” virus since it emerged in Asia in 2003, but if it became transmissible directly between human beings it could cause a pandemic that could kill tens of millions.”

Read more from the New Zealand Herald.