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Article: Swine flu: Lessons we should learn.
- Article from:
- Arab News (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia)
- Article date:
- May 19, 2009
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Al Bawaba (Middle East) Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Gwynne Dyer
We seem to have got away with it this time. The swine flu turned out not to be a global killer, at least not in this first go-round. But we have had a fright, and maybe we should learn something from it.
In 1994, only 10 percent of American pigs lived out their brief lives in vast factory farms. Only seven years later, in 2001, 72 percent did. The percentage is even higher today - and it's now known that the virus that caused the outbreak in Mexico is a direct descendant of one that was first identified on an industrial-scale pig-raising facility in North Carolina in 1998.
It's not just pigs. Fewer than three hundred people ...