The serious and unwelcome "swine flu" is making its way into a growing number of countries and communities, another bad rap for pigs.

According to the AADS (Association Against the Defamation of Swine -- and as far as I know I just now invented this organization) this is nothing new...

Pigs get a bad rap in many circles, even in the Bible:

• compared with indiscretion, in Proverbs
• likened to eating rats or hanging out in cemeteries, in Isaiah
• Jesus says not to throw "pearls" (life's most sacred and precious things, or truths) to swine
• Jesus drives demons out of a couple men into a herd of pigs, which all die in the incident
• in one of Jesus' parables the prodigal son, reaching his lowest point, has to farm pigs and gets so hungry he covets their food

Nothing positive about pigs in the Bible. Muslims and Jews won't eat pork, considering it unclean according to religious dietary laws.

Outside of cute characters in movies and literature (and with the notable exception of many acceptable forms of packaged, processed protein available for ingestion), pigs are stinky, filthy, ungracious, rude, and unwanted.

(One other exception - grease one down and chase it around for sport - the pigs love this.)

Back on topic, as the media is FINALLY reporting, we can't contract "swine flu" from eating pork.

Incidentally, while this flu may have originated in Mexico, people in the United States consume about 53 pounds of pork per capita per year. And China produces five times as much pork as the U.S.

As the "swine flu" spreads, it turns out that no pig anywhere has yet been shown to be infected with this virus, properly dubbed H1N1. The virus apparently passed through a pig population at some point but it has mutated and migrated to humans and is now passed through contact with human respiratory fluids (airborne or via skin to eyes, nose, mouth tissues).

Pigs do get a bad rap but THIS time, pigs are off the hook, so to speak.

"Swine flu" aside, let's look a few of the dynamics playing out behind this story.

• poor people have a higher risk of exposure to disease, living in less sanitary conditions
• poor people have a higher risk of severe illness or death due to limited or no health care access, and compromised nutrition and immune systems
• misinformation can seriously impact livelihoods and economies (like the pork industry is now experiencing on a global scale)
• when people get sick and then get better, fine; when people get sick and die, there's an impulse to assign blame someone, rightly or wrongly

Do any of these dynamics seem fair to you? If not, can you think of any appropriate actions you can take to counter these dynamics?

God willing this will be a short-lived and contained pandemic.

Surely it's at least possible that God created pigs for something better than a reputation of filth and disease, or mass-scale food production?

[image CC, courtesy of be_khe]