The country’s well-known comedian Mike King, who formerly supported a campaign to promote the sale of pigs’ meat, went with animal rights group Save Animals from Exploitation to a crated factory pig farm for an expose later aired on Television New Zealand’s (TVNZ) Sunday program. Mr. King expressed his own shame after witnessing the factory farm pigs, stating, “It was like they were screaming for you to help them. If I had known this was going on I would never have supported it. I firmly believe that anyone who sees this would say this has to stop.”

The very conditions of such operations have one more reason to be deemed intolerable by people: They lie at the crux of increasingly frequent generation of new, harmful viruses, including the avian flu, and now the swine flu. The total number of confirmed swine flu cases is at least 8,829 worldwide, with widespread human-to-human transmission continuing in places like the US.

Speaking at the international World Health Organization (WHO) meeting in Tokyo, Japan, WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan stated that the present danger is that the swine flu virus could interact with other flu strains and become more life-threatening, cautioning that the coming days and months would spare no country of its harmful effects.



VOICE: We thank Director-General Dr. Chan for her concerned leadership in uniting the world to protect the public in the face of this precarious trend. We also thank Mr. King, Television New Zealand and Save Animals from Exploitation for raising awareness of the unfavorable food production practices directly related to our lives. Our prayers continue for all those affected by this swine flu virus, and that everyone may act to stop the harm, by choosing one plant-based meal at a time.