Nationwide Egg Recall: Recall expands to more than half a billion eggs (LIST)

The recall from U.S. factory farms has expanded to more than half a billion eggs. The recalled lots (list) are confirmed to have been tainted with Salmonella and have sickened more than one thousand people. The enormity of the contamination has renewed concerns about the dangers of factory farming:

Dr. Marion Nestle of the department of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, and the author of "Food Politics" and "What to Eat", is a member of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. She toured several factory farms last year.

"It's hard to explain unless you actually see one of these places," she tells CBS News. "Try to imagine an enormous warehouse, as long as two or more city blocks, packed with hundreds of thousands of chickens. And that's 'free range.' Otherwise they are caged six to nine in a cage. If one gets sick, they all get sick."

Links and lists follow with recall information. One possible way to avoid the consequences of factory farming is to buy local, small farmed and, where possible, organic.

Farmer's markets (worldwide): Link.

The egg recall is expected to continue to grow with reports of illness expanding as the Centers for Disease Control record more incidents. Continued...

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Swine 'Flu: U.S. Industrial Farm Connection?

by Janet Ritz

Sources are pointing to U.S. factory hog farming in Mexico (a subsidary of Smithfield Foods was mentioned as having a possible connection), with their huge open ponds of waste that allow birds to mingled swine and bird 'flu, which then brings biting insects who pick up the mixture and infect to people carrying the human 'flu -- a perfect storm of disease if it turns out to be the cause:

Officials from the CDC and USDA will likely arrive in Mexico soon to help investigate the deadly new influenza virus that managed to jump from pigs to people in a previously unseen mutated form that can readily spread among humans.

One of the first things they will want to look at are the hundreds of industrial-scale hog facilities that have sprung up around Mexico in recent years, and the thousands of people employed inside the crowded, pathogen-filled confinement buildings and processing plants.

Continued...

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