Bird Flu - Pigs Barking Blood - The Diigo Meta page

• 30 May 07
  

  James Linzel
  • Increasing consumer demand for animal products worldwide over the past few decades has led to a global explosion in massive animal agriculture operations which have come to play a key role in the Third Age of emerging human disease.950
  • Even industry groups like the American Association of Swine Veterinarians blame “[e]merging livestock production systems, particularly where they involve increased intensification” as a main reason why zoonotic diseases are of increasing concern. These intensive systems, in addition to their high population density, “may also generate pathogen build-ups or impair the capacity of animals to withstand infectious agents.”949
  • The USDA explains that this bacteria can exist as a harmless component of a pig’s normal bacterial flora, but stress due to factors like crowding and poor ventilation can drop the animal’s defenses long enough for the bacteria to become invasive and cause disease.937
  • Raising pigs is not new in Malaysia, but intensive industrial production is. The Leong Seng Nam farm, where the epidemic broke out, confined more than 30,000 pigs. The Nipah virus, like all contagious respiratory diseases, is a density-dependent pathogen,925 requiring a certain threshold density of susceptible individuals to spread, persist, and erupt from within a population.926

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