Has anyone else seen this email? Calling H1F1 the NAFTA Flu.

[Wapsie B]

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail] On Behalf
Of Astrid Berkson
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 3:31 PM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: NAFTA flu

Swine Flu and Factory Farms

ROBERT WALLACE, [e-mail]
Wallace is visiting professor in the department of geography at the
University of Minnesota and author of the forthcoming book "Farming
Human Pathogens: Ecological Resilience and Evolutionary Process." He
write a blog called "Farming Pathogens: Disease in a world of our own
making."

His most recent piece is "The NAFTA Flu," available at his web page:
http://farmingpathogens.wordpress.com .

He writes of the name "swine flu": "It detracts from an obvious point:
pigs have very little to do with how influenza emerges. They didn't
organize themselves into cities of thousands of immuno-compromised pigs.

They didn't artificially select out the genetic variation that could
have helped reduce the transmission rates at which the most virulent
influenza strains spread. They weren't organized into livestock ghettos
alongside thousands of industrial poultry. They don't ship themselves
thousands of miles by truck, train or air. Pigs do not naturally fly.

"The onus must be placed on the decisions we humans made to organize
them this way. And when we say 'we,' let's be clear, we're talking how
agribusinesses have organized pigs and poultry. ...

"The North American Free Trade Agreement, pushed by Bill Clinton in 1993

and approved by a bipartisan Congress, reduced trade barriers across the

U.S., Canada and Mexico. Products could now be marketed across the three

countries without levies that favored domestic industries. The agreement

also allowed companies to purchase and consolidate businesses in other
member countries. ...

"Where the housing bubble and banking collapse mark the aftermath of
financial deregulation, H1N1 is only one of several pathogens that now
track neoliberalism's effects on global health."


I just got this and my bullshit detector is going off.

[Junkdrawer]

1. Confirmation here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5569987&mesg_id=5569987

[NYC_SKP]

2. "neoliberalism" what, are the left and the right fighting for whom to blame for NAFTA

From my recollection, EVERYONE loved fucking NAFTA.

Toxic imported goods from sub-standard farms and factories abroad.

Impossible! :eyes:

[Wapsie B]

4. That's what got me too.

Too bad that this didn't originate in some Chinese sweat shop, err I mean vendor for Wally World.

[damntexdem]

8. Everyone? No way. Labor in particular complained.

As did some of us now on here.

[NYC_SKP]

15. naturally, some of us and some of congress, but it was not a left or right thing.

I just remember reading about it and who was endorsing it and it had strong support from major Dems and Republicans.

And I thought, this is not good.

[The Magistrate]

3. The Name Is Good Enough For Agit-Prop Work, Sir

The center of the outbreak is a town near an industrial pig facility owned by a U.S. corporation in Mexico. It is an investment of a sort that would not have been possible without the N.A.F.T.A. in place. The facility was established because labor costs are lower in Mexico, and environmental enforcement virtually non-existent. The conditions of an industrial piggery are certainly conducive to a stew of newly combined viral elements arising, and it is not much of a step for a hardy product of same to reach people resident near-by.

[Junkdrawer]

12. See the link in Post #1, The CDC verifies the genes in this H1N1...

can be traced to a 1998 North Carolina Hog Farm virus.

[The Magistrate]

13. Very Interesting, Sir: Thank You For The Heads-Up

N.A.F.T.A. struck me from the first as a very poor idea, and it is interesting to see the full breadth of that play out in ways well beyond those that were so obvious from the beginning.

[Junkdrawer]

14. The RW talking point of "The Mexicans are infecting us" is on its head...

We infected them.

[damntexdem]

5. This answers some of the questions being asked on here yesterday about whether it was NAFTA flu.

Further epidemiological investigation could try to establish the links to the Smithfield Farms pig-raising factory farms in Veracruz, Mexico, near the original human outbreak.

[kestrel91316]

6. As bad as factory farming conditions are in the US, they are far worse

across the border, where even the most basic safety and animal husbandry regulations apparently don't exist. Swine are known to serve as perfect "mixing vessels" for influenza viruses, which is why all our new flus seem to arise in Third World agricultural districts (traditionally Asia, and now Mexico).

[Cirque du So-What]

7. My local (Gannett) newsrag

has a poll on the front page: Should President Obama close down the US - Mexico border to slow the spread of the swine flu?

[damntexdem]

9. Too late, as already noted by the WHO and the CDC.

The flu has already spread far and wide enough that it cannot be 'quarantined' to Mexico.

[vaberella]

10. I'm protected against trash email. However, I know several on DU have received it. n/t

[Wapsie B]

11. Surprisingly a friend of mine sent it.

This person is a hard-core Dem so I know they weren't trying to indoctrinate me. Normally I get trash from rwing spammers and it gets disposed of.