Dream Farm Turns into Slaughterhouse...

Hey all y'all,

Apologies for the lateness of this post. I hope the article to which I'm referring has not been taken down by the time you, dear reader, come across it:

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Health/Swine+turns+dream+farm+into+slaughterhouse/1581664/story.html

I stumbled across this a while ago and, really, it flat-out irritated me. The article is about an Alberta pig farmer who had to quarantine, and eventually kill, 500 pigs because they were infected with H1N1. The article talks about how he came over from Holland and the wonderful life he made for himself in Alberta before the tragedy struck. What I take serious issue with it the definition of "tragedy."

I think the part of the article that most bothers me is the title: Swine flu turns 'dream' farm into slaughterhouse. Because the slaughterhouse is the exact place the pigs would have been sent next if they hadn't come down with swine flu.

The supposed tragedy, then, is not that these pigs were killed--it's that no profit was made from these pigs being killed. I'm sure you could also make an argument for wasted "food," but I obviously take at least some issue with that.

I know picking on a poor farmer who just lost thousands of dollars is not going to make me the most favourable of folks. It certainly doesn't make me happy to hear about Van Ginkel, or any other farmer for that matter, losing large sums of money. But at the end of the day ( I'm paraphrasing a quotation from the movie, Your Mommy Kills Animals here), him making a profit off of those animals would have ensured more animals would have been moved in to take their place. At least now, there's a bit of uncertainty on that.

I would also like to add that there's a lot of speculation that factory farming might have played a major role in creating the Swine flu outbreak:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/swineflufarm/
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/30/did-factory-farming-cause-the-swine-flu-outbreak/

For those of you who don't think factory farming is an issue in Alberta, here's one for you:
http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2001/06/factory_farm.html

That is a 2001 article, so that 1/3 number has probably changed. One thing history tells us about factory farms is they grow almost as fast as the sickly animals on their farm.

And on that note, I'm officially going to continue calling it Swine Flu whenever possible.