Daily New York Times connects, in a wide investigative article, the nowadays swine flu wave and the one that affected Romanian farms in 2007. "That particular strain affects only hogs, but scientists have found elements of swine viruses — one from Europe or Asia, the other from North America — in the genetic code of the new influenza A(H1N1) virus", NYT notes.
The newspaper shows that Smithfield - a company that claims that there are no swine flu cases among its employees or among the hogs in its farms - is involved in a joint-venture company that operats a hig farm in Mexico, very close to the place where the swine flu epidemy first burst. According to NYT, the American company managed to put up 40 farms in Romania in a very short time, thanks to the lobby campaign that involved, among others, the US ambassador to Romania, Nicholas Taubman.
The main information published by New York Times, in brief:
- The way the large farms developed in Poland and Romania, the largest East European states within the European Union, offers a perspective over the way Fortune 500 companies operate in remote places;
- Smithfield has a joint venture in a Mexican hog farm located near where United Nations scientists are investigating a potential link between pigs and the new strain of influenza in humans;
- With the exact origins of the virus still in doubt, Smithfield emphasizes that the disease has struck none of its hogs or employee;
- But Smithfield’s global approach is clear; its chairman, Joseph Luter III, has described it as moving in a “very, very big way, very, very fast.” In less than five years, Smithfield enlisted politicians in Poland and Romania, tapped into hefty European Union farm subsidies and fended off local opposition groups to create a conglomerate of feed mills, slaughterhouses and climate-controlled
