Editor:

While there is a move afoot to take the "swine" out of swine flu, readers should remember that it's called swine flu for a reason. It's what pigs get, just as avian flu comes from chickens. Studies have shown that 30 percent to 50 percent of the pigs raised for food in the U.S. have been infected with some strain of swine flu.

This is hardly surprising: Today's factory farms are disease incubators where animals are warehoused in filthy, extremely crowded sheds and cages, left standing mired in their own waste. Farmers feed pigs and other animals a steady diet of drugs to reduce disease and keep them alive in unsanitary conditions, but this only increases the chance that drug-resistant superbugs will develop. Hans-Gerhard Wagner, a senior officer with the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, has called factory farming an "opportunity for emerging disease."

We already know that eating meat can lead to heart disease, obesity, strokes, certain types of cancer, and other health problems. The current swine flu epidemic provides just one more reason to leave meat off our plates. For a free vegetarian starter kit, visit www.PETA.org.

CHRIS HOLBEIN, Norfolk, Va.

Project Manager, Special Projects Division,

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals