We have to step back from intensive farming

With up to 150 people in Northern Ireland being treated for swine flu, isn’t it time we focus on the cause of these viruses before it’s too late?

Diseases run rampant on crowded filthy factory farms, where hundreds of pigs are forced to live in filthy, crowded sheds.

As Hans-Gerhard Wagner, a senior officer with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation, has said, the intensive industrial farming of livestock is an “opportunity for emerging disease”.