Swine Flu : Changed Name Turned Into Debate
Posted on October 7th, 2009 in Global Focus Contagious_Disease, Pandemic
How big were the loss of pork industries which caused by swine flu?
Before answer it, please have your time to read a simple explanation paragraph below, tough not a complete one.
Porks are consumpted by people almost in each country. It’s said that pork is delicious. There’re many recipes to cook it and you can find thousands of them from internet. Regardless the delicious of the pork (because I’d never tasted it before), we would like to see the statistic of this pork consumption from all over the world. Here is the top 18 pork consumption base on USDA census of agriculture.
Now, we’d like to know how many population of each country above. Data below is taken from here.
Population
| Country | Population |
|---|---|
| Denmark | 5.484.723 |
| Spain | 40.491.052 |
| Hongkong | 7.018.636 |
| Germany | 82.369.552 |
| Hungary | 9.930.915 |
| Poland | 38.500.696 |
| Sweden | 9.045.389 |
| France | 61.037.510 |
| China | 1.330.044.544 |
| Singapore | 4.608.167 |
| Canada | 33.212.696 |
| United States | 303.824.640 |
| United Kingdom | 60.943.912 |
| Australia | 21.007.310 |
| Japan | 127.288.416 |
| Russia | 140.702.096 |
| Mexico | 109.955.400 |
| Brazil | 196.342.592 |
Assuming that only 70% people of each country consumpt porks and the average of living pig (not carcass) is 200 pounds, then we can calculate the amount of pigs that are required to fulfill the need. A healthy pig should weight between 200 and 240 pounds. Healthy pigs will gain from 1.5 to 1.8 pounds per day if fed properly. Feeder pigs that weight about 50 pounds at the start of the project usually make the best 4-H market hogs.
| Country | Total Pork Consumption (in pound) |
|---|---|
| Denmark | 547.485.050 |
| Spain | 3.486.279.577 |
| Hongkong | 598.900.210 |
| Germany | 6.746.066.309 |
| Hungary | 627.037.973 |
| Poland | 2.242.280.535 |
| Sweden | 502.742.721 |
| France | 3.272.831.286 |
| China | 69.827.338.560 |
| Singapore | 222.897.038 |
| Canada | 1.539.076.333 |
| United States | 13.356.131.174 |
| United Kingdom | 2.316.478.095 |
| Australia | 588.204.680 |
| Japan | 3.216.578.272 |
| Russia | 2.856.252.549 |
| Mexico | 1.724.100.672 |
| Brazil | 2.776.284.251 |
Total pigs required are 116.446.965.285 pounds or about 258 million pigs in 18 countries. This amount can cover all of Australia continent. May be you would see the difference between the result in my article before (here). The difference is I use 193,11 pound-pig-weight, as I use 200 pound-pig-weight here. Let’s say that pig price is $0,5 / kg or $100/each (or you can see here for higher price). Then, we can calculate how much money that each country spend to buy pigs.
Total Expenditure for Pig
| Country | Total Money |
|---|---|
| Denmark | $273.742.525 |
| Spain | $1.743.139.789 |
| Hongkong | $299.450.105 |
| Germany | $3.373.033.154 |
| Hungary | $313.518.897 |
| Poland | $1.121.140.268 |
| Sweden | $251.371.360 |
| France | $1.636.415.643 |
| China | $34.913.669.280 |
| Singapore | $111.448.519 |
| Canada | $769.538.166 |
| United States | $6.678.065.587 |
| United Kingdom | $1.158.239.048 |
| Australia | $294.102.340 |
| Japan | $1.608.289.136 |
| Russia | $1.428.126.274 |
| Mexico | $862.050.336 |
| Brazil | $1.388.142.125 |
Total of amount price is $58,223,482,642 in 18 countries. A fantastic number, isn’t it? When swine flu, which is referred to pig disease, spread worldwide, kill hundred to thousand people, can you see the effect for these industries? WHO declared swine flu as pandemic in June 11, 2009 after this disease hurted $97 billion U.S pork industries because people are afraid of eating pork. It was a extremely big disaster for these industries.
Before June 2009, in April 2009, in Washington, Tom Vilsack, US Secretary of Agriculture, demanded : “Change the name of this flu! It’s H1N1!”
Could it be?
Let’s find out.
Changing name : Is it a good idea?
Six of the eight genetic segments of this virus strain are purely swine flu and the other two segments are bird and human, but have lived in swine for the past decade, says Dr. Raul Rabadan, a professor of computational biology at Columbia University.
A preliminary analysis shows that the closest genetic parents are swine flu strains from North America and Eurasia, Rabadan wrote in a scientific posting in a European surveillance network.
“Scientifically this is a swine virus,” said top virologist Dr. Richard Webby, a researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Webby is director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Lower Animals and Birds. He documented the spread a decade ago of one of the parent viruses of this strain in scientific papers.
“It’s clearly swine,” said Henry Niman, president of Recombinomics, a Pittsburgh company that tracks how viruses evolve. “It’s a flu virus from a swine, there’s no other name to call it.”
Dr. Edwin D. Kilbourne, the father of the 1976 swine flu vaccine and a retired professor at New York Medical College in Valhalla, called the idea of changing the name an “absurd position.”
The name swine flu has specific meaning when it comes to stimulating antibodies in the body and shouldn’t be tinkered with, said Kilbourne, 88.
This is not what WHO wanted. WHO said that using swine flu word would mislead some countries to slaughter pigs. Even now, I don’t know what WHO tried to say. It’s pig, not human.
In here you will know that there’s no other name for swine flu. It’s a swine flu.
Things that people should understand
Not because of swine flu word, it made loss in the pork industries. Not because of swine flu word, pigs were slaughtered in some countries. Not because of swine flu word, people are afraid of eating pork.
But, because of swine flu word, people aware. Because of swine flu word, people knew where it came from. Because of swine flu word, people got warn. And that’s why people exactly know what to do. This information should not be kept. Instead, government must give more and more information to people.
This site is about care and healed. First thing you do to get healed is to care. That’s why people didn’t eat pork, or even prevent their family to eat pork. If you don’t care about, who will?
Related posts:
- Swine Flu in Indonesia : Unfolding the Facts — (Part 1)
- Swine Flu in Indonesia : Unfolding the Facts — (Part 2)
- Swine Flu in Indonesia : Unfolding the Facts — (Part 5)
- Penyakit-Penyakit Yang Ditularkan Melalui Hewan (I)
- Penyakit-Penyakit Yang Ditularkan Melalui Hewan (II)
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