Ok, I'm sure its stuff a lot of us know already, and its mainstream press, but if reading this article doesn't make you think twice about eating that sausage, then I don't know what will...

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/02/swine-flu-pandemic-mexico-pig-farming

Excerpt:

"If these new viruses are the toxic debt of the food system, the genetically improved pig is its highly engineered and artificial derivative. Pumped up like a bodybuilder, dependent on antibiotics and vaccines to keep it going, it has disproportionately large back legs to meet a market that likes hams more than shoulder of pork; it has tiny ears and no tail to limit the scars from the aggressive behaviour distressed conditions produce; and it is bred without hair for ease of slaughter. When herds of 5,000 of these genetically identical modern animals catch flu, it rips through them.

Large-scale producers pride themselves on their economic efficiency, but if the true costs of such polluting and disease-harbouring methods were internalised rather than externalised as environmental debts, they would be anything but good value. The cost of the flu pandemic will be unquantifiably large, but it is not the industry that will pay. Instead, the damage will affect the poorest disproportionately. It is ordinary Mexicans who are most affected now, just as the sub-prime mortgage crisis has made those at the bottom of the ladder homeless."