What are the pigs telling us?

(via entrenomadas). The Spanish writer Manuel Vilas wrote this blog post about the outbreak of swine flu, or "gripe porcina" as it is called in Spanish.
Marta quote his post in its entirety, as will I. She is a vegetarian; I am not, but I no longer buy any meat, poultry or fish that is produced by industrial animal husbandry, both because it is cruel and also because it is unsanitary and unhealthy.

"La masificación de los cerdos es la causa del virus porcino. Hay 25 millones de cerdos en España. Tocamos a más de medio cerdo por español. Hay 60 mil millones de cerdos en el mundo. Políticamente, el mundo-cerdo está sin estructurar, pero biológicamente el mundo-cerdo ha empezado a emitir señales de defensa: el virus. Lo mismo ocurre con los pollos.

El virus porcino significa que los cerdos están reaccionando a su producción industrial ilimitada. Biológicamente tienen derecho a hacerlo, por eso lo hacen.
Indudablemente, estamos ante un proceso: aves, cerdos y vacas. El fenómeno de las vacas locas sigue las mismas claves. Pienso que la siguiente especie serán los peces de piscifactoría: truchas, doradas, lubinas, etc, pues en algún momento tendrá que producirse una correspondencia proporcional entre el mundo terrestre y el mundo acuático.
Parece que el reino animal inicia una tenue emisión de mensajes. Están emitiendo. Están diciendo algo. Oigámoslos. Los cerdos, por fin, han empezado a hablar. Ya era hora de que emitieran algún mensaje.
La creación de un virus es una forma del logos.
Nadie soporta perder la identidad, ni siquiera los cerdos. El virus porcino nace de la perdida de identidad a escala industrial. Los cerdos antiguos no producían virus porque tenían identidad. Los cerdos actuales han iniciado la operación ESPARTACO."

MANUEL VILAS

My freehand translation:

"The mass production of pigs is the cause of the swine flu virus. There are 25 million pigs in Spain. We're up to a bit more than half a pig per Spaniard. There are 60 billion pigs in the world. Politically, the pig-world has no structure, but biologically the pig-world has begun to emit signs of defense: the virus. The same is happening with chickens.

The swine flu virus means that pigs are reacting to their unlimited industrial production. Biologically they have the right to do so, which is why they are doing it. Without a doubt, we are faced with a process: poultry, swine, cattle. The phenomenon of Mad Cow disease follows the same logic. I think the next species will be fish in the fish farms: trout, doradas, lubina, etc, because at some moment there has to be a proportional equivalence between the terrestrial and the aquatic worlds.
It seems as if the animal world is beginning to send out a tenuous set of messages. They're broadcasting. They're saying something. Let's listen to it. Pigs have finally begun to speak. It was about time they tried to send a message.
the creation of the virus is a kind of logos (word).
Nobody can bear to lose their identity, not even pigs. The swine flu virus is born because of the loss of identity at the industrial scale. Pigs from the old days didn't produce the virus because they had an identity. Today's pigs have begun OPERATION SPARTACUS."

If you choose to quote any part of this, please attribute the text to its author, Manuel Vilas. We already know about the relationship between diseases and industrial farming, and this most recent case should ring alarms about the inhumane and unhealthy animal farming operations, , such as CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) aka "factory farms" which have become the prevalent way of breeding pigs for market.

UPDATE: via Snarkmarket, this fascinating post about epidemiology and urban space by Geoff Managh"This Diseased Utopia: 10 Thoughts on Swine Flu and the City" from his blog BLDGBLOG.