A mother sow nurses her piglets in a confined animal feeding operation, or CAFO. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

The British paper The Guardian suggests the origin of the new swine flu in Mexico may be traceable to a four-year-old boy in Veracruz as its first victim. A Mexican affiliate of the Smithfield factory farm is about 12 miles away. Sources for the company said it has tested clean. Others argue that the waste from the facility has caused an outbreak of illness among nearby residents.

A posting at the Center for Environmental Journalism argues that the U.S. media is ignoring the possible factory farm link. It includes a 2008 study commissioned by the Pew Foundation that underscores how factory farms are putting public health at risk by serving as a breeding ground for diseases that can afflict people as well as pigs.

This research from the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology is one of many whose findings raise serious questions about the infective agents released into the air by CAFOs (confined animal feeding operation).

The failure of the U.S. media to explore this larger picture is frightening. In an era of declining fortunes, you would think the American newspapers would be fighting to bring us the truth, to prove their worth. Instead they appear to shy away from tough reporting on this issue, either out of cowardice in the face of corporate pressure or, as I learned firsthand when I wrote about agriculture for many years, because most reporters know little or nothing about farming and typically could care less.

Unlike the majority of the reporters covering this story, I have been in a CAFO full of pigs. Fortunately, I suffer from anosmia (lack of a sense of smell), but I saw mama pigs in those farrowing crates. I have seen chickens with their beaks cut off so they won’t cannibalize each other when crammed into wire cages. Visits to such facilities made me a vegetarian years ago.

The sad fact is that I can struggle to become more food independent, by putting in my hoophouse (the passive solar greenhouse I hope will allow me to raise all of our foods), but I still cannot escape the disasters of industrial ag.

No one is safe when the same problems that plagued our financial system were allowed to infect our food supply as well. Rules were written to benefit the corporations with the greatest lobbying power. Meanwhile the regulatory system itself was starved for funds to the point that there are not enough inspectors to guarantee our safety. Trade agreements allowed other countries to compete without meeting our environmental or labor standards.

The true definition of a disaster waiting to happen.