Mistreating livestock can have devastating consequences for people

Killing sick animals for food or mistreating livestock can have devastating consequences ranging from the worldwide spread of avian flu to outbreaks of bird and swine flu that killed hundreds of thousands of people, a Maryland expert says.

Michael Greger, director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States in Bethesda, published two journal articles linking the emergence of food-borne diseases to factory farming.