Word: pigging
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...attempt to answer that question, but one way to begin is to look at where the virus originated. Epidemiologists appear to be homing in on a possible ground zero in the Mexican Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, in a town called Perote, which is home to a large pig farm owned by the U.S. company Smithfield Foods. Flu-like cases began popping up there in early April, before the first confirmed case in Mexico on April...
...Then I watched as the mechanical disassembly line swung into action. First, the scalding tank that loosened the pig’s skin, then the series of machines and knife-wielding workers who swiftly converted the pig into a plastic-wrapped meat parcel. I asked one worker, “Do pigs ever get skinned alive?” “No,” he quickly replied, and then modified, “Well, when they do, I get really annoyed about it; that creates more work...
...This year I wrote my senior thesis on those cages. What struck me most forcefully was how the horrific has become normal. Last week, a pig factory farm in Shuyer County, Illinois, burnt down. The owners had economized by neither installing a sprinkler system nor a night watchman who could release the pigs. In the ensuing blaze, 11,000 pigs were burnt alive, many struggling frantically to escape their cages—firefighters recalled the horrific squeals they heard. Yet nothing changed. The owners promptly claimed insurance and will soon rebuild their factory farm...
...rdova responded that there had been mixed signals from the flu epidemic in La Gloria and most who had taken ill had suffered from a familiar form of the influenza virus. He also said the government had no model of the H1N1 virus - which has features of avian, pig and human viruses - to base their studies on. "We never had this kind of epidemic in the world," he said on Monday. "This is the first time we have this kind of virus." As if to underline the point, the conference and Mexico City were rocked by tremors from...
...Gloria outbreak may also give clues about the origins of the virus. The community is a few miles from an industrial pig farm Granjas Carroll de Mexico, which is 50% owned by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, Inc. Residents have complained for several years about effluent - composed of animal waste and porcine feces - dumped by the farm and accuse it of making them fall sick. However, government agricultural experts joined the company in saying they have found no traces of swine flu in its hundreds of workers or thousands of hogs and piglets...