To blame modern farming methods for swine flu?

[macaronie]

There seems to be a lot of discussion in the media about treatments/vaccinations etc, but a lack of general knowledge about global, unnatural corporate factory farms. Surely these types of diseases will keep happening unless more awareness and legal changes are made, such as limiting the size of farms and improving the conditions of animals. Also (and I know it's a bit controversial here), shouldn't the health, environmental and financial benefits of a vegetarian type diet be given more government backing?

[sweetfall]

you're really, really not getting the concept of virus mutation are you?

[sweetfall]

There seems to be a lot of disucssion in the media about treatments/vaccinations etc, but a lack of general knowledge about global, unnatural hair dye.

Well you may as well mayn't you?

[sweetfall]

[cornsilk]

I misread this as modern parenting methods. (It's early.)

[squeakywheel]

Factory farms won't help with disease spread and opportunities for mixing, but flu viruses will mutate regardless. New diseases will keep happening, full stop.

One of the things that's dangerous for H5N1 (avian flu) is the close proximity of chickens and people in houses (the very opposite of factory farming) that you get in a lot of countries like Indonesia, because this gives even more opportunities for people to catch it from chickens. If one day someone catches a version that's mutated by chance to be easily transmissible between people, we could be really screwed because more than half the people who catch H5N1 die. Corporate factory farms aren't good in their own ways but it's not a case of them being dangerous and other ways of keeping chickens safe, from the point of view of diseases that can be spread to humans.