Another reason to be a vegetarian
I just finished reading The Face on Your Plate, a book by Jeffrey Masson that explores the impact of eating meat on the environment, the cruelty the animals endure, and the denial that humans continue to exhibit with regard to all of this. He notes that the intense animal production by huge agribusiness is linked to zoonotic diseases, including new strains of influenza. The specific link to H1N1 influenza is outlined in an interesting article in The Guardian last month by Mike Davis. Although H1N1 has received a huge amount of media attention, this aspect of the story has seen little coverage.
I saw an interview with the director of "Food, Inc." on PBS NOW and I think the most poignant observation he made was that a package of ground beef, a burger, is conceivably the mashed mixing of a thousand different cows, mixed together as part of a general vat of meat. It's a rhetorical statement, but not beyond that range of food science fiction.
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