Pork farmers say PEDv will likely never be gone in the U.S.--though news articles about it might be.
There is a reason to reject bacon even if people do not care a whit about animals. The salty bacon flavor so many people love is created by ingredients no one loves --nitrites. Sodium nitrite, also found in ham, pastrami, salami, hot dogs and sausages, inhibits bacteria, lengthens shelf life and imparts the pleasing taste and color that add to these foods' appeal. But, and it is a big but, during the process of cooking, nitrites combine with other chemicals to form carcinogens which many health organizations warn against.
Researchers have known since the 1970s that the preservatives become "nitrosamines" in the body--compounds that cause cancer. Following a 2008 American Institute for Cancer Research/World Cancer Research Fund report that found just one hot dog a day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 21 percent, there were calls to ban such processed meat, especially in schools. Recently, the World Health Organization reignited the controversy and declared processed meats Group 1 carcinogens, the highest risk category that exists. WHO researchers, who analyzed 800 studies, defined processed meat as "anything transformed to improve its flavor or preserve it, including sausages, beef jerky and anything smoked." WHO researchers identified links from processed meats to colon, prostate and pancreatic cancers and other research links them to lung cancer, kidney cancer, stroke, coronary heart disease and diabetes mellitus. The American Cancer Society tells people not to eat them.
Is the current bacon shortage caused by the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus which depleted at least a tenth of all U.S. pigs, possibly more? We don't know. What we do know is bacon is not good for humans and that the factory farms that produce it are not good for animals.
(Article changed on February 2, 2017 at 22:37)
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