So a day after an Edmonton Sun article was lamenting the plight of pork producers and complaining that medical authorities were still calling the new virus "Swine Flu":
"Why couldn't the flu have been dubbed the H1N1 flu, for the sake of accuracy, when farmers first raised concerns?"
Well it turns out, this is why ..... This just in: "Alberta Pigs Believed to be infected with Swine Flu"
Oops! And this only one day after our incompetent Agriculture Minister, Garry Ritz, and Canada's Tory answer to 'just a brain stem', Minister Stockwell Day, issued a news release assuring one and all that:
"The government of Canada is confident that Canadian pork is safe. We want to reassure Canadians that human swine influenza cannot be contracted through eating pork or pork products."
What! Okay, maybe its true we can't catch it from eating pigs. But if they can catch it from us and we can catch it from them.... maybe it should be called "Farmers-Swine Flu"? And maybe Ritz should not have released Friday's news release if they already knew the story of sick Alberta pigs was going to break today.
Oh well, ... chalk up another one for the Tory's. They've tried to say 'Don't worry, be Happy' one too many times - (see: Tory fall debacle over the true state of the economy). While we can understand why they want to spin a bad situation; rather than issuing an its-okay-to-eat-pork memo on the very eve of a more ominous news release they probably knew was coming was too cute by half. Coming out with a news release that draws attention to pigs and professes them to be safe when you know there is a good chance a bad announcement is on the way is just plain silly. And all it does is draw attention to how stupid and just plain wrong you are ... yet again!
Can't imagine what this will do our pork export market. One things for sure - it ain't gonna help! A year from now Ritz will be in charge of another closed door inquiry that will be guaranteed NOT to get to the bottom of the issue.
Whew, the more things stay the same, the more they....
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If you are so smart, then use your brain. The man came from Mexico, caught the flu and gave it to the pigs. It is a human flu, H1N1. And secondly, producers frequently vaccinate for influenza in pigs and surprise, surprise, they get better just as these get better. Oh, it was the World Health Organization that specified the fact it was H1N1 and not swine flu.
ReplyDelete@H
ReplyDeletere: dangers of cross species viral contamination and concerns over mutation --->
see: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090503.wflumain04/BNStory/National/home
Further, while producers do vaccinate their stock, the efficacy of the vaccine is only effective for known viruses. Problem with "A H1N1" is that its virulence and its possible endemic nature are not known- definitive information on the nature of the capacity of the host species to resist the pathogen is not yet known. Cross species contamination is always bad!