The other concern I have with this unregulated industrial meat production is the extent to which antibiotics are required to enable the survival to slaughter of the animals. It is not an issue for this latest virus, in so far as I know, but these conditions could also be brewing the next virulent multiply drug resistant bacteria. Should one of these bacterial strains also acquire human-to-human airborne transmissibility it could pose serious pandemic potential.
We are now in the process of empirically quantifying the "external" costs of NAFTA. "Who could have imagined" that these external costs would not have been confined to areas outside the "first world?" Or perhaps the truth is that an external cost of NAFTA is turning out to be the destruction of any distinction between "first world" countries and "second or third world" countries. And not just for health issues. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
So the criminal waste of antibiotic efficacy that has taken place since the drugs were discovered in the 40's sometime -- by overprescription, but mostly by overuse and abuse in factory ag -- does have a bearing on the animal virus risk. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
