Swine Flu in Indonesia : Unfolding the Facts — (Part 2)
Posted on September 29th, 2009 in Global Focus Contagious_Disease, Pandemic
Is it safe to eat pork now?
When experts said that cooked pork products are safe to eat because the virus cannot be transmitted by eating food, it is probably true. The virus habitat is in respiratory system, not in blood and meat. Anyway, who have tried to eat those meat from H1N1-infected pigs? Would you be the first who try? Tell me if you really did.
As reported by National Post, China, May 7th, 2009, meat from pigs infected with H1N1 flu should not be eaten by humans, a World Health Organization official said, while emphasizing existing checks were sufficient to safeguard the food supply from the new virus strain. Jorgen Schlundt, director of the WHO’s department of food safety, zoonoses and foodborne diseases, said care must be taken to ensure pigs and their meat were checked for all diseases, including the H1N1 virus that may be present in the blood of infected animals. WHO said the same thing for Reuters.
I considered H1N1 virus as H5N1 like virus based on the fact that they have a lot of things in common. I insist to treat H1N1 virus as H5N1 virus. So, don’t eat the infected ones. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple thing to do. We can recognize H5N1-infected poultries, but we can’t recognize H1N1-infected pigs, not with our barely eyes. Instead of suggesting not eating meat from H1N1-infected pigs, it’s better no eating porks at all.
Is it safe to breed pigs?
How do we get porks without breeding pigs first? If eating porks is probably safe (according to experts, not me), how about breeding pigs? Is it safe? Are you sure about it? No pigs means no porks.
There are about 7 million pigs in Indonesia. It takes the third place after poultries and cows as the biggest source of protein. Pork consumption is 15,43 pounds per year (7 kilograms). It is known that the average cold pork carcass weight recorded by the USDA in 2000 was 193.11 pounds. There are 222.611.000 people in Indonesia and 14% of them eat porks. So, it required about 2,5 million pigs to fulfill their pork cravings for the year. It’s 36% of pigs population in Indonesia. The transmission from swine to human is believed to occur mainly in swine farms where farmers are in close contact with live pigs. With only 2,5 million pigs are required, it will be more than enough to have an outbreak of swine flu in Indonesia, especially known as a tropical country.
Let us compare to China. There are about 500 million pigs in China. Pork consumption is 75 pounds per year (Source : www.nationmaster.com). There are 1.320.892.000 people in China. Let say 70% of them eat porks. So, it required about 360 million pigs or 71% of pigs population in China.
How about Mexico and Spain? Each required 10 million and 23 million pigs per year. There are more countries that I don’t count yet such as United States, Britain, Germany, Netherland, Australia, etc. What I want to tell you here is there is a very significant relationship between breeding pigs in tropical and sub tropical countries with swine flu incidence rate. It’s not safe to breed pigs in tropical countries. I’m sure many farmers would not be glad to hear this. But when we tried to overlook it, please read this article below.
Straittimes September 4, 2009 – The Influenza A (H1N1) virus has been detected in pigs imported into Singapore from Indonesia’s Pulau Bulan, Singapore’s only source of live pigs. Twelve pigs have been confirmed to have the virus, which causes infections in humans too.
But Singapore’s Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) has given the assurance that there is no risk of people catching the virus from eating pork as H1N1 is not transmitted from handling meat.
Eight of the pigs are on the farm and have been isolated. The other four were sent to Singapore’s only abattoir in Jurong, and slaughtered and sold. It is not yet known how the pigs contracted the virus, though pigs in Australia and Canada have caught it through human handlers.
Scientific Facts
Scientists have published new research exploring the characteristics of the pandemic swine flu strain, including why it appears to affect younger people more severely. This research was carried out by Yasushi Itoh, Yoshihiro Kawaoka and colleagues from the Shiga University of Medical Science, and other academic and medical institutions in Japan and the US. The study was published in Nature and supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Public Health Service, ERATO (Japan Science and Technology Agency), departments of the Japanese government and by a grant for Specially Promoted Research.
These following conclusions would be interesting :
- The genetic make-up of the current H1N1 pandemic virus suggests that it originated in pigs, even though there were no porcine outbreaks of the disease reported before the first cases of human infections.
- CA04 isolates were found to efficiently replicate in the lungs of pigs without causing any symptoms. The researchers suggest that this may explain the lack of an outbreak of swine flu in pigs.
- CA04-neutralising antibodies were found in many people born before 1918 (the year of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic), and this suggests that exposure to the human H1N1 viruses that circulated until 1957 (which were closely related to the 1918 Spanish flu virus) could confer some immunity to people aged over 60 years.
Let’s see what we’ll find in Part 3.
Related posts:
- Swine Flu in Indonesia : Unfolding the Facts — (Part 1)
- Swine Flu in Indonesia : Unfolding the Facts — (Part 3)
- Swine Flu : Changed Name Turned Into Debate
- Penyakit-Penyakit Yang Ditularkan Melalui Hewan (I)
- Penyakit-Penyakit Yang Ditularkan Melalui Hewan (II)
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