Swine flu by any other name is still swine flu. But because pork producers are worried that swine flu will hurt U.S. pork sales, authorities are now referring to it as the "H1N1 virus." By removing the word "swine" from "swine flu, to help pork producers sell more sausage and bacon, officials are essentially letting the meat industry off the hook for fostering life-threatening diseases.

Swine flu is called "swine flu" for a reason, because it afflicts pigs. (It's a combination of pig, bird, and human influenzas.) Health experts have been quick to point out that people can't catch swine flu from eating "properly-prepared" pork, but raising pigs for pork is what puts people at risk for swine flu in the first place. People's desire to eat meat means that pigs, chickens, cows, and other animals must be mass-produced in crowded, waste-filled factory farms.

Swine flu flourishes on pig farms, where tens of thousands of pigs are packed in filthy, damp sheds that stink of urine and feces. Lawmakers in Veracruz, Mexico, where the swine flu outbreak is believed to have originated, have acknowledged that pig and chicken farms are breeding grounds for disease. Because animals are kept in such close proximity, and in such putrid conditions, the viruses that cause swine flu, bird flu and other illnesses often mutate into a pathogenic form and sicken humans.

The prevalence of animal-borne illnesses like swine flu and bird flu indicates that we must change our intensive farming practices, not just in Mexico or Asia, but in the U.S. as well. Between 30 and 50 percent of pigs in the U.S. have been infected with some strain of swine flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to Dr. Michael Greger, the Humane Society of the United States' director of public health and animal agriculture, an H1N1 avian flu virus jumped from birds to humans in 1918, and killed around 50 million people. Humans passed the virus to pigs and it's become one of the most common causes of respiratory disease on North American pig farms. In 1998, a new pig/human virus was identified on a hog farm in North Carolina. Within a year, a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus had spread throughout the U.S. Some experts believe that the new swine flu viruses are on an evolutionary fast track, jumping between species at an unprecedented rate. (See http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/swine_flu_virus_origin_1998_042909.html for more details.)

Another infection, MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus bacterium that kills more Americans than AIDS, is also linked to pig farms. A study by a University of Iowa epidemiologist found that 45 percent of the pig farmers and 49 percent of the hogs sampled carried MRSA. Researchers in the Netherlands determined that pig farmers there were 760 times more likely than the general population to carry MRSA. Scientists have also found MRSA in at least 68 percent of the pig farms in Belgian. In 37 percent of the cases, the farmer and the farmer's family carried pig MRSA, a variant of human MRSA.

If we don't want pigs, chickens, and cows to be our downfall, either through animal-borne diseases or through heart disease, diabetes, or cancer, it's time we revaluate the way we treat them -- and the way we eat. The fewer animals we raise, the fewer animal-borne diseases there will be. And since meat is high in saturated fat and cholesterol, everyone would be better off if they traded in their pork sausage, hamburgers, and chicken's legs for soy sausage, veggie burgers, and faux chicken.