because there’s never been a documented outbreak of fish flu or fishpox. And there may be a connection with factory farming in Mexico, where hogs and chickens are both raised in large, tightly packed facilities.

David Kirby: Swine Flu Outbreak — Nature Biting Back at Industrial Animal Production?

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.