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Home | Health: Smithfield Farms Denies Link to Swine Flu Outbreak

Apr 27, 2009

Just in case you were wondering ...

Smithfield Foods, the Virginia-based industrial food giant that specializes in pork-producing factory farms, is denying any link to the swine flu outbreak now affecting hundreds of people in a half-dozen countries around the world.

The Smithfield press release says that there is no known connection between eating pork and contracting swine flu -- true -- and that none of its workers have been found to have the disease. All the same, the Mexican press has been reporting Smithfield facilities in Mexico as the possible point of origin for the disease, not through its products, but through possible contact via contaminated water or other means. (Swine flu "jumps" from pigs to humans through human association with live animals, not through the consumption of processed pork.)

Smithfield has long been criticized for its environmental and sanitation record. (Very creepy Rolling Stone article, if you care to read.) Granjas Carroll is the Mexican subsidiary of Smithfield linked to the outbreak in press reports.

-- Aaron | Link