Millions of pigs killed because of swine fever outbreak.

[Catherine]

There is a swine fever out break in South East Asia. It is not a disease that humans get, but it spreads easily between pigs and there is no cure and it is fatal. An estimates 3.7 million pigs have been killed in an effort to stop the spread.

https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/milli...56329.html

This is a shocking loss of life. I can understand the desperation to try and stop the disease from spreading. Culling seems like the best way to stop the spread of disease. However, perhaps if we changed our farming methods diseases would not spread so quickly. So often animals are kept in crowded conditions. They are not permitted to exhibit natural behaviors. Animals that are stressed and over crowded would be more vulnerable to disease. If we want to prevent terrible epidemics like this we need to rethink how we deal with farm animals in the first place.

For now we seem helpless to stop the spread of swine fever. It keeps popping up in different places. I hate to think of how many pigs are going to die before this is over.