(영어TCT시험)H1N1 Virus: The First Legal Action Targets a Pig Farm(09.05.16)
In an initial step toward what could be the first wrongful-death suitof its kind, Texas resident Steven Trunnell has filed a petitionagainst Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer, based inVirginia, and the owner of a massive pig farm in Perote, Mexico, nearthe village of La Gloria, where the earliest cases of the new H1N1 fluwere detected. Trunnell filed the petition in his home state on behalfof his late wife, Judy Dominguez Trunnell, the 33-year-oldspecial-education teacher who on May 4 became the first U.S. residentto die of H1N1 flu.
In late April, Dominguez Trunnell, who was eight months pregnant,became ill with what would eventually be confirmed as H1N1 flu. Whilethe vast majority of victims of the virus — there have been more than4,700 probable and confirmed cases in the U.S. — have recovered withoutcomplications, Dominguez Trunnell grew sicker, eventually being placedon a ventilator. Early this month Dominguez Trunnell passed away, weeksafter her baby daughter was delivered via cesarean section. "She was afun and caring person," Trunnell tells TIME. "She didn't deserve this."(See pictures of H1N1 flu hitting Mexico.)
Trunnell's petition seeks to investigate claims that the H1N1outbreak began in Smithfield's massive pork operation in La Gloria andthat the virus may have been caused in part by the conditions underwhich the farm operates, which the petition terms "horrificallyunsanitary."
"This affected my family," says Trunnell, a paramedic who will nowbe raising two children on his own. "I need someone to be heldaccountable for this."
If Trunnell ends up following through with a wrongful-death suitagainst Smithfield Foods, it will most likely make legal history. Noone has ever tried to hold a corporation responsible for theinadvertent creation of an infectious disease. Trunnell and his lawyer,Marc Rosenthal, do not claim that Smithfield purposely bred the virus,but rather that its Perote operation, which raises some 1 million pigsannually in close quarters, established the necessary conditions forthe virus to arise. If Smithfield had taken better care of its farm,the petition claims, H1N1 might never have been introduced to the world.
"We think that the conditions down there are a recipe for disaster,"says Rosenthal. "This type of virus is more likely to evolve and mutatein this much filth and putrescence. It's more than a mere coincidencethat the first cases emerged right there in La Gloria." (Read five things you need to know about H1N1 flu.)
The suit will hinge on the fact that the first confirmed case ofH1N1 appears to be a 5-year-old Mexican boy from La Gloria who livednot far from the Smithfield pork-farming operation. Local villagers hadbeen complaining about the smell and the vast amounts of manure createdby the Smithfield pig farms for some time, and H1N1 infection rates inthe community were high. The idea that factory farming — where pigs arepacked together closely — could provide a breeding ground for newviruses also has some scientific backing. A recent study by the PewCharitable Trusts and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of PublicHealth found that such operations could increase the risk fortransmission of new viruses, including swine and avian flu.
To date, 34 countries have reported 7,520 confirmed cases of H1N1infection, including 60 deaths in Mexico. In the U.S., the death tollreached four on Friday, and scientists studying the virus say the novelflu virus appears to be about twice as contagious as the regularseasonal flu. Although the "H1N1 virus tends to cause very mild illnessin otherwise healthy people," according to a World Health Organizationstatement on Monday, "the youth of patients with severe or lethalinfections is a striking feature of these early outbreaks."
The outbreaks have been a minor catastrophe for pork producers.Though international health officials were quick to assure the publicthat the disease initially known as swine flu could not be contractedby eating pork, consumption of pig products dropped rapidly in the wakeof the virus's spread. "That is our biggest concern — the economicimpact of people shying away from eating our product over fear," C.Larry Pope, CEO of Smithfield Foods, told the Richmond Times-Dispatchon May 5. The National Pork Producers Council estimated that betweenApril 24 and May 1 — the most frenzied days of the H1N1 outbreak so far— the disease cost the pork industry $7.2 million a day.
If Trunnell's claim goes forward, Smithfield will face more seriousproblems. But that's a big if. Scientists are still far from certainwhere the H1N1 virus originated or how long it may have beencirculating in pigs or people (the first human outbreak is thought tohave occurred in February). So far, no pigs have been found to beinfected with the virus, other than at one farm in Canada on May 2,where the swine were actually infected by a human worker. And on May14, Smithfield announced that Mexican authorities had completed testsof the company's pigs in Perote and found no evidence of the virus inthe swine. (It's not clear what test Mexican authorities used; onlyblood tests for antibodies can confirm the virus.)
Rosenthal says he doubts the Mexican tests and wants to have thePerote pigs examined by his own experts. Having Smithfield report onthe tests "is like the fox guarding the henhouse," he says. If the casegoes forward, Trunnell will be suing Smithfield for up to $1 billion,which would include punitive damages, and Rosenthal indicates that hewould be open to launching a class action on behalf of other H1N1victims.
Reached for comment, Smithfield declined to discuss Trunnell's petition.
New viruses have emerged from animals to infect and kill humans forthousands of years, and while today's factory-farming conditions mayraise that risk, it will be tough to hold any one corporationresponsible. But Steven Trunnell wants to fight. He says that, contraryto early media reports, his wife Judy had no underlying medicalcomplications and was healthy before she contracted H1N1. "Sheaccomplished so many goals, and she was the mother to a 4-year-old," hesays. "It was a gross injustice." Viruses, however, have no sense ofjustice — and no court in the world will be able to change that.
(영어TCT시험)H1N1 Virus: The First Legal Action Targets a Pig Farm(09.05.16)
