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Pope of Smithfield Foods Doubts Veracruz Pig Flu Persuasively

By John Batchelor on May 2, 2009 at 9:04 AM in Influenza Pandemic, John Batchelor, John Batchelor (author), Media, Radio

Virginia’s Smithfield Foods CEO Larry Pope speaks with much careful persuasion against the suspicion of the partially Smithfield-owned CAFO, or mega pig farm, at La Gloria, was the source of the A/H1N1. The interview drags on, but Pope makes is good points right away.

No pig is sick at La Gloria, no pig worker is sick – and neither is a pig or a pig worker sick anywhere else in the Smithfield system.

Pope speaks under fire. The Smithfield stock has dropped 20% in the past days. Only 20%, because, if it was proved that El Gloria was the source, then the stock would have been crushed. Pope says a major team is headed to La Gloria to do a thorough audit.

His remarks come after the surprising news from California that two children fell ill with the A/H1N1 on March 30 and April 1. One ten year-old boy in San Diego County, now recovered; and one nine year-old girl in Imperial County, now recovered. Neither is known to have had contact with pigs. It is illogical to argue that Edgar Hernandez at La Gloria is Patient Zero. Unless and until the virus is found in the one million pigs at La Gloria, Veracruz State, the outbreak origin remains unknown.

tek

Strange. I read last week that the pigs at the Smithfield farm were sick and the people on that farm were the first to sicken and die. Whatever, common sense tells us that animals living in disgustingly unsanitary conditions get sick and spread illness to humans–look at all the different corporate farming techniques-fish farms, hog farms, poultry ranches–all cause illness to humans.
Diana L. C.

As with the Avian flu, I think we’ll find that the cases that really started this are those where people are living in poor conditions raising a pig or two and in close contact with the pigs.

The conditions of factory farming, however, are so disgusting that I think throwing some public exposure on them is a good thing. CEO Pope’s (I liked the reporter’s slip, calling him Poop before correcting herself) points were logical and valid, but his clinical terminology disgusts me: “discard those animals.” The description of the blood testing and the hint at drug usage sickens me. It is NOT the way animals were supposed to live.

Pigs are so intelligent and animals do feel.

If most people had to be familiar with the way the meat they purchase all packaged so nicely and arranged in grocery cases got there from animal to store, they might do as I did and go vegetarian–trying to work my way to vegan.

Every time someone tells me that he/she found a cheap cut of meat, I always answer that it’s not cheap for the animal it came from.
Texas Playwright

I’m all for intelligent, thoughtful research and reporting, as this CEO Pope seems to be doing re: Smithfield piggies. Would that we could have have such reasoned approaches to facts vs. rumor in the sham Dem primaries 2008 and sham GE 2008.

Thanks again for this site, Larry. You allow us to question, evaluate and question again. I so appreciate it.

C’mon, We the People. Do your homework and put America in the smart column again.
Phishmelt

you don’t need dirty conditions for this to happen. a pig sickness and a type of flu probably combined together in a freak random event. even in clean conditions things could get sick. but, in clean conditions the meat is probably better for you and other problems would arise. but this particular condition i doubt would have been stopped by clean conditions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhXA3fXpCFk Woman Voter

His remarks come after the surprising news from California that two children fell ill with the A/H1N1 on March 30 and April 1. One ten year-old boy in San Diego County, now recovered; and one nine year-old girl in Imperial County, now recovered.
Neither is known to have had contact with pigs. It is illogical to argue that Edgar Hernandez at La Gloria is Patient Zero.
….

CNN’s Dr. Gupta Tracking Swine Flu Patient Zero in Mexico -Focus on a young Mexican boy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne9XxKDjBa4

????
Baba Rum Raisin

Arnold Ziffle is Patient Zero!
TeakwoodKite

“Outbreak” is now showing at the MSM…

Lord, I hope they don’t light one up over Fortuna Ca. again…. oh wait a minute, …they can’t even shut down the southern border, even as an exercise, never mind if the small arms being shipped south are nothing compared to the large arms and personnel being shipped north…oh wait…we can shut down our virtual fence…. Come on now! Do we want the Chinese to be the only ones with a “fence” that can be viewed from space? I mean you have to draw a line somewhere don’t you? Think of all those tourist dollars we’d get.

I think the best thing to do is give free health care to all those poor people in Mexico and on down to the southern tip of Argentina…then they will not need to crowd the ER capacity in the USA. (oh now hold on there Teak)

BO thinks “the horse has left the barn”? Why then did they leave his horses ass behind? Hey BO… didn’t you say UBL is toast? You get that from Brennan?

I wonder, if the pig won’t talk and say where this Swine flu came from, is it legal to make chops out of him?
Reason

Swine flu comes from human contact with pigs. Agribusiness, given it size and a record of human health problem, would be a very good place to start looking for where this all came from.

If there were a lot of people sick in the town near the very large Smithfield farm in Mexico it would be very logical to start the investigation there, especially before the company gets there to cover things up and hide the conditions on the farm. The locals claim that things were not right at the farm. I am sure the locals have a pretty good idea what is going on. I am also sure the farm has the local government officials in their back pocket, so it is likely we will never know whether Smithfield was to blame or not.

However, that does not take away from the fact that there is a good chance that it was U.S. business that was partly if not entirely to the blame.

Kind of makes all these racist slurs toward the Mexicans that much more BS. Typical of Americans to blame everyone else, but themselves and to have no idea to what they are doing to the rest of the world in the name of money.
oldone

Did that reporter just introduce Mr. Pope as Larry Poop?