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COMMENTS: Hot Hogs may Help Mutation
Smithfield Foods is the Virginia-based hog farmer whose new operations in Mexico had already attracted an alert from the Pew Charitable Trust as possible "breeding grounds for new strains of the 'flu," Hari Sreenivasan told us on CBS. Pew warned that warm weather might make the hog farms a fertile mutation ground. Sreenivasan laid out the scenario that worried Pew's scientists: "Flies carrying avian 'flu come into contact with farm-raised pigs. The avian 'flu virus mutates in the pigs and gets transmitted as swine 'flu to farmworkers who infect their local communities." As for Smithfield Foods, they "deny being the source and say they are cooperating with health officials."
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