The Answer Is We Don't Know

The first US victim of swine flu is a 23 month-old child who died in Texas. However, he was infected in Mexico. The danger of this strain of flu will probably not be apparent until the fall, when we see if it mutates. Right now, it's harmful, but not more so than other flu viruses, which kill thousands annually, usually those who are vulnerable like children and the elderly. If it mutates into something more dangerous, we won't be able to mitigate the effects as well. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen.

...Meanwhile, the Organic Consumers Association has demanded that Smithfield close its factory farms that may have contributed to the virus.

Factory farms, such as Smithfield, dose pigs with massive amounts of antibiotics and vaccines, resulting in swine incubating and spreading antibiotic-resistant pathogens and mutated viruses. This is considered a major human health hazard by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Given these serious public health concerns, a number of health and safety organizations have called for limits or bans on the use of antibiotics in livestock farming including the American Public Health Association, American Medical Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. .

Organic Consumers Association and Via Organica are calling on their hundreds of thousands of members in the US and Mexico to contact Mexican President Calderon and his Agriculture Secretary Alberto Cardenas and US President Obama and his Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and urge them to:

• Immediately ban Confined Animal Feeding Operations (hog, beef, and chicken factory farms) across the United States and end the dangerous practice of feeding antibiotics to farm animals.

• Initiate a criminal investigation of Smithfield Foods and other major factory farms that could be a source of disease outbreaks.

Workers Rising

While the job numbers are appalling and business plans to cut to the bone to survive the economic turmoil, we are seeing the rise of a new set of labor activism - workers demanding respect for the law and dignity for themselves. And they're starting to win some fights.

The employees at Republic Windows and Doors ended their sit-in strike with the bank acceding to their demands:

Jubilant workers, cheering and chanting "Yes We Can," celebrated outside a Chicago factory after approving a $1.75 million agreement to end their six-day sit-in, a dispute that became a symbol of the plight of labor nationwide [...]

About 200 of 240 laid-off workers began their sit-in last week after Republic gave them just three days' notice the plant was closing. They vowed to stay until they received assurances they would get severance and accrued vacation pay.

Each former Republic employee will get eight weeks' salary, all accrued vacation pay and two months' paid health care, said U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, who helped broker the deal. He said it works out to about $7,000 apiece.

That's not nothing, although of course they have no job. But it's a warning to any other company attempting to get away with stiffing their workers on their obligations.

And then there's this great achievement for the labor movement:

Workers at the world's largest pork slaughterhouse have voted for a union, ending a bitter fight and scoring a huge victory for organized labor in the South.

It was a narrow victory among the more than 4,500 employees at Smithfield Foods' Bladen County plant, who voted Wednesday and Thursday. The vote tally, released late Thursday, was 2,041 to 1,879.

"Today, justice has truly been served," said Mattie Fulcher, a nine-year employee of the plant. Fulcher, a union supporter who observed the count, said the union would protect her from a company where "the pigs mean more to them than I do."

The Washington, D.C.-based United Food and Commercial Workers Union has been trying to unionize the plant, about 80 miles south of Raleigh, since it opened in 1992. The plant's workers slaughter and butcher as many as 32,000 hogs a day.

You'll notice that it took 16 years to get the union, so, remember that the next time Republicans tell you that all they want is a democratic secret ballot for union elections. They actually want the ability to stall and delay and allow businesses to stop their workers from organizing.

A victory like this in the traditionally "right-to-work" South is doubly significant.

Don't mourn, organize.