Vegans say swine flu would be more appropriately names factory farm flu. In fact, for the last several thousand years, epidemiologists have established that virtually all the plagues and many of the diseases afflicting humans have been caused by "zoonosis" – the transmittal of diseases from animals to humans. By keeping and herding animals unnaturally, we fall prey to viruses and bacteria that we would normally never be exposed to and by hyperconfining animals for food in factory farms, we compound the problem.

Some examples of these animal-sourced diseases: AIDS, bubonic plague, cholera, diphtheria, Ebola, measles, SARS, smallpox, West Nile virus, swine flu and avian flu. We do not catch diseases from plants! Do you know anyone who has come down with Dutch Elm Disease? The reason that native American people were wiped out by diseases brought by European settlers was that they had not built up the immunities that Europeans had over their centuries of herding and living with livestock.