Hog wild

Uncomfortable facts about the swine flu outbreak 8

hogYou’re testing my patienceDon’t associate U.S. pork with the swine flu outbreak—you can’t catch it through pork. Plus, no pigs on U.S. CAFOs are infected with it.

That’s message the industry and the USDA are straining  to get across, anyway. Except ... you can catch swine flu from pork, according to the World Health Organization. Here is the Reuters:

Meat from pigs infected with the new H1N1 virus shouldn’t be used for human consumption, the World Health Organisation cautioned on Wednesday, adding it was drawing up guidelines to protect workers handling pigs.

...

The WHO ... said it was possible for flu viruses to survive the freezing process and be present in thawed meat, as well as in blood.

“Meat from sick pigs or pigs found dead should not be processed or used for human consumption under any circumstances,” Jorgen Schlundt, director of WHO’s Department of Food Safety, Zoonoses and Foodborne Diseases.


Yikes. And that bit about how the U.S. hog herd is free of H1N1? Here is The Wall Street Journal: 

While Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says there is “no evidence” of the new swine flu in U.S. pigs, the federal government doesn’t aggressively search for it on farms.

Mr. Vilsack’s statement is designed to bolster the Obama administration’s argument that U.S. consumers and trading partners haven’t any reason to shy away from eating U.S. pork. But the observation isn’t based on any extensive sampling program of the sort that is used by the federal government to alert it to other animal disease, such as mad-cow disease and bird flu.

Indeed, only in recent months has the Agriculture Department begun organizing a federal pilot program for screening pigs for flu. And that move came at the prodding of officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC officials have been worried that pigs might serve as a “mixing vessel” for a flu virus capable of sweeping through the human population. The pilot program has yet to begin to collect samples. [Emphasis added.]

The article continues: “[V]eterinary experts say it’s impossible to know whether U.S. pigs are free of the new virus, which was detected over the weekend in a Canadian hog herd. Farmers aren’t required to report flu outbreaks in their pigs to authorities, and the collection of the 500 samples [assembled nationwide from livestock vets] wasn’t designed to detect a low level of a new virus in U.S. swine, of which there are about 65 million head.”

Hat tip to the fantastic Eddie Gehman Kohan of Obama Foodorama.

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.

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  1. x99x's avatar

    x99x Posted 4:34 pm
    08 May 2009

    Thank you.

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  2. uniqueinvest Posted 9:48 pm
    08 May 2009

    They continue to lie to to us.  I saw this report which said that any pig snot that gets on the hands of a human being and this person has not watch their hands is another way one can pick up this swine flu thing.  The uncomfortable facts you have here, I do believe.  There are worries about the sales of Pork. That is why the name has been changed to H1N1 instead of swine flu..... Have been a vegetarian all of my life and will continue to be one.

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    1. SaraJane Posted 1:43 pm
      09 May 2009

      Actually, it was changed to H1N1 because that is the scientific term for this kind of flu - it marks the types of H and N proteins on the surface, which is the way molecular biologists and epidemiologists track strains of flu. H1N1 isn't 'rebranding', it's scientifically much more appropriate than swine flu. The thing is, this strain of flu can pass from human to human now, so calling it swine flu is misleading - you're a lot more likely to catch the flu from another human than from a pig.I believe the worry with pork products only applies to contamination durring butchering. The meat itself should not have virus particles in it, and if it does they are destroyed durring the cooking process. Freezing for transport and storage might not be enough however. So this applies a lot more to people handling pork durring transit than end consumers.As far as pig snot... all flu is spread by sneezes and "fomite" transmission. Always wash your hands frequently in flu season!

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      1. uniqueinvest Posted 3:52 pm
        09 May 2009

        Thanks for clearing that up. And I agree with you. One should always wash their hands. I for one do and my family as well.

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  3. Noah Pollock Posted 9:50 am
    10 May 2009

    The global industrial agricultural industry is hard to trust anymore. Its attempt to misinform the public about swine flew is the latest in a long series of market driven decisions that externalize environmental, social, and human costs. We need to rethink our food system in a way that better rewards small scale food production, and that connect a community more directly to the food it eats and rehumanizes our food system. Check out the program the the Institute for Global Sustainability at the University of Vermont's (http://learn.uvm.edu/igs) foci on food systems for more information, or to get involved in the related discussion during one of the classes offered this summer (http://learn.uvm.edu/igs/food_systems)

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  4. Tyler Durden Posted 10:03 am
    10 May 2009

    While I have no doubt that meat from agribusiness is unhealthy for a number of reasons, the hysterial created by this flu story would be laughable if not for the end result.  Stories like this are propagated in order to keep people living in fear in order to create more of a police state.  If the Bush administration could have gotten away with it, they would probably have done a 911 themselves just to be able to create more of one and to have an excuse to murder people in the Middle East to control the oil (which is what the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are mainly about).  If the people in power really cared about preventing a global pandemic of a serious, potentially fatal disease, they would greatly reduce global trade and travel.

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  5. Bud Dingler's avatar

    Bud Dingler Posted 11:12 am
    10 May 2009

    Laughable is right.    http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/47411,news,british-press-gets-swine-flu-hysteria-over-mexico-factory-farming   " Indeed, there are, presently, some good reasons to doubt any such connection: at the time of writing, two weeks into the outbreak, the Mexican authorities have not found a single pig infected with the flu virus in Mexico, far less at the Granjas Carroll farm. And none of the workers at the farm has thus far fallen ill.   More to the point, there is as yet no evidence that humans contracted this strain of flu from pigs – whether by eating pork or handling the beasts themselves. As Dick Thompson of the World Health Organisation says: "There is no association that we've found between pigs and the disease in humans."  Where are the sick CAFO workers in USA or south of the border? This is all a figment of someones imagination and undermines attempts of reform in the Industrial Ag complex by playing. he fear card. I highly doubt Tom has any credentials to make these speculative claims and using the term "facts" in the heading of this post.   

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