Mordechai Treiger | A virus by any other name

Nobody wants to get swine flu, and for good reason. With symptoms like fever, coughing, headache and possible death, the disease is the greatest threat to our health since the Great Meningitis Outbreak of 2009.

But there is one thing people seem more afraid of than contracting swine flu - calling it that. And the world's reluctance to call a pig flu "a pig flu" could be more harmful to its health than the outbreak itself.

The virus' name serves as an important reminder that there is a direct relationship between what we choose to eat and the health of our society as a whole.

That swine flu originated in pigs is not the subject of serious controversy. Henry Niman, who tracks virus evolution, told The Associated Press that "it's a flu virus from a swine. There's no other name to call it."

Niman's assessment hasn't stopped people from trying. Many are doing their best to deny any association between swine flu and our porcine companions.

When I first heard that Israel planned on renaming the disease 'Mexico flu' because swine don't chew their cuds - a requirement for meat to be kosher, the attempt struck me as somewhat self-defeating. After all, as long as swine flu was not kosher, Israelis should have remained safe.

Though its reasoning is outlandish, Israel is not alone in its quest to do away with the swine in 'swine flu'. Other countries, like the Netherlands, made a similar switch to 'Mexican flu' in homage to the site where the disease was first detected.

Even the Center for Disease Control sought to re-label swine flu after two of its defining genetic markers, H1 and N1. This nomenclature is, of course, technically accurate, and differentiates the strain from H3N1, H2N3, and others.

But the CDC didn't make the change in the name of strict scientific accuracy. Instead, the move was a nod to America's $97 billion pork industry, which expressed concern that the association between their product and a deadly disease was hurting sales. In fact, the National Pork Producers Council estimated that swine flu cost its members over $50 million in sales during the last week of April alone.

Indeed, as there is no risk of contracting the disease from eating pork, America's pig farmers seem justified in distancing their product from swine flu.

But their attempt to redefine the disease threatens to obscure the animal origin of the outbreak and allows pig farmers and those who choose to consume their product to shirk any responsibility for its emergence.

Historian Clive Ponting argues that human disease and animal husbandry are inextricably linked. As of 1991, when he wrote A Green History of the World, humans shared "65 diseases with dogs, 50 with cattle, 46 with sheep and goats, and 42 with pigs." Many of the diseases from which we suffer are simply the natural consequence of living with animals.

Modern agricultural practices only tend to make the problem worse. Often animals are raised on factory farms in crowded, squalid conditions that are conducive to the spread of disease. And the antibiotics that make factory farms possible force the development of dangerous drug-resistant microbes, like MRSA.

This is the environment from which swine flu emerged. Everyone who benefits from livestock, particularly livestock raised by modern industrial farming, bears a share of the responsibility for this (and every other) outbreak of swine flu.

Animal husbandry is obviously not going to go away, and I'm not going to argue that people should not eat meat. But they can certainly eat less of it and make sure that when they do so, it was grown using the safest possible practices.

Fortunately, Penn's recent decision to replace Aramark with Bon Appetit will help students choose to support a healthier food supply.

Director of Business Services Laurie Cousart said that Bon Appetit's leadership in sustainable dining was a factor in the decision to bring the company to campus. She added that Bon Appetit comes to Penn with a number of programs designed to force students to think about where their food comes from, such as Farm to Fork, which showcases food produced within 150 miles of campus.

While Bon Appetit will direct you to better choices, it cannot force you to make every right decision about what to put on your plate. So next time you sit down in 1920 Commons, don't just stop to consider where your food came from. If swine flu has taught us anything, it's that it is just as important to stop and think about where our diseases come from.

Mordechai Treiger is a rising College senior from Seattle. His e-mail address is treiger@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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