This is another helpful article from the writer putting ST398 at the centre of media attention. See link below for full story.
Some readers have suggested that I’m picking on pigs (in my last couple of columns), since other animals can also carry MRSA. That’s true, but there are a couple of reasons for focusing on hogs.
One is that hogs produce vast amounts of waste, creating important sanitation problems. The town I reported my first column from, Camden, Indiana, has a population of a bit more than 500, and a sewage system to match. But around it are more than 50,000 hogs, producing more waste than a city of 100,000 people, and there’s no sewage treatment system for those hogs. Instead, the waste sits in ponds and eventually seeps into ground water. No city of 100,000 would ever go without a sewage system, but that’s routine for clusters of hog operations. And sanitation is one route by which diseases including MRSA can spread. There’s some evidence that the business model of industrial hog operations is essentially to save money by externalizing the sanitation costs on the public.
via When Boars Grope Sows…. – Nicholas D. Kristof Blog – NYTimes.com.
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