FARMERS FEAR PIGS MAY GET SWINE FLU FROM PEOPLE - UPDATE

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                               FARMERS FEAR PIGS MAY GET SWINE FLU FROM PEOPLE
           






Carey Gillam
– Fri May 1, 2009
KANSAS CITY
(Reuters)

– Humans have it. Pigs don't.

At least not yet, and U.S. pork producers are doing everything they can to make sure that the new H1N1 virus, known around the world as the "swine flu," stays out of their herds.

"That is the biggest concern, that your herd could somehow contract this illness from an infected person," said Kansas hog farmer Ron Suther, who is banning visitors from his sow barns and requiring maintenance workers, delivery men and other strangers to report on recent travels and any illness before they step foot on his property.

"If a person is sick, we don't want you coming anywhere on the farm," Suther said.

Those sentiments were echoed by producers around the nation this week as fears of a possible global flu pandemic grew, with more than 200 people sickened, including more than 100 in the United States, and at least 177 dead, all but one in Mexico.

"There is no evidence of this new strain being in our pig populations in the United States. And our concern very much is we don't want a sick human to come into our barns and transmit this new virus to our pigs," said National Pork Producers chief veterinarian Jennifer Greiner.

"If humans give it to pigs, we don't have things like Tamiflu for pigs. We don't have antivirals. We have no treatment other than to give them aspirin," said Greiner.

The World Health Organisation on Thursday officially declared it would stop calling the new strain of flu "swine flu," because no pigs in any country have been determined to have the illness and the origination of the strain has not been determined.

The never-before-seen H1N1 flu virus has elements of swine, avian and human varieties.

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PIGS BEHIND SECURITY FENCES




Still, U.S. hog farmers said flu fears have hit them hard in the wallet as hog prices plummeted this week in response. Many countries reacted to the outbreak earlier this week by banning pork or meat from U.S. states that have human cases of the flu. And Egypt ordered the slaughter of all pigs in the country as a precaution.

U.S. hog producers have already been struggling financially for more than a year due to poor prices and high feed costs. If the new flu strain does hit their herds, it could spur further price declines, and could potentially spread broadly through herds.

To try to protect against such a scenario, industry groups and veterinarians this week warned farmers to step up their biosafety protocols, keeping pigs in barns behind security fences with access by any outsiders extremely limited.

Purdue University veterinarian Sandy Amass said farmers should keep an eye on pigs for "coughing, runny nose, fever and a reduction in feed intake," and to have the animals tested immediately if they exhibit such flu symptoms.

"Pigs get flu just like people get flu," Amass said. "We're want to do everything possible so the pigs don't get infected."

For Carroll, Iowa, producer Craig Rowles that means if any of his workers feel sick, they are ordered to take time off work -- paid -- to keep them away from the pigs.

"It's a real issue," Rowles said. "If the pigs get it, there isn't much we can do. Water, aspirin, and bed rest, that's all we've got."



(Reporting by

Carey Gillam;

additional reporting by
 Bob Burgdorfer
in Chicago,

Editing by
Sandra Maler)

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                                                     PIGS CATCH  SWINE FLU   


                                                      Farmhand Infects Herd






By CLARA HO,
SUN MEDIA
May 3, 2009

A pig herd in central Alberta has been infected with the swine flu virus in what could potentially be the first human-to-animal virus transmission case, provincial officials confirmed yesterday afternoon.

More Albertans have also been affected by the bug, with Edmonton seeing its first four cases of the swine flu.

A man, young girl, and two women all have minor forms of the flu and are said to be recovering, and all are believed to be isolated cases, said the province's top doctor, Andre Corriveau.

The 2,200 animals were exposed to the virus by a farm worker exhibiting flu-like symptoms after returning from Mexico.

The office of the chief provincial veterinarian was notified Tuesday that some of the farm's pigs showed flu-like symptoms after the worker, who came home on April 12, exposed the pigs to the virus when he returned to work two days later.

The farm was immediately placed under quarantine and samples were taken and sent to the National Centre for Foreign Diseases in Winnipeg to be analyzed. A bulletin was also sent out to the province's pork industry workers.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is now leading the investigation with the help of Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development.

The pigs, the farm worker, and the family living on and running the farm have since recovered or are recovering, said agriculture Minister George Groeneveld. There have been no other reports of swine flu viruses in pigs and the flu has been confined to this particular operation, he added.

Groeneveld emphasized that there is no evidence that the flu virus can be contracted by eating pork or pork products, adding: "Pork is safe to eat. There is no risk to our food supply."

However, he said these findings could have an impact on Alberta's pork producers and the export market.

"Border closures are unwarranted but there have been some closures because we have the (swine flu) in Canada," Groeneveld said. "We'll see what transpires. I think we'll have to talk to our American counterparts and they have no problems, at this point, with the export of our pork."

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EVERYDAY STRAIN



Dr. Gerald Hauer, chief provincial veterinarian, said that swine flu is known to occur in pigs in the province, particularly a common everyday strain of the swine flu virus.

But this is the first time they were made aware of a swine flu strain that could be transferred from humans to animals.

Biosecurity measures such as limiting visitors to pig farm operations and ensuring workers shower before and after entering pig farms, are in place to prevent other similar incidents, Hauer said.

He noted that the flu virus is a "notifiable" disease, meaning within 24 hours of noticing or suspecting signs of the swine flu, incidents must be reported to the chief veterinarian's office.

Corriveau, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, said from a human perspective, a possible human-to-animal transmission of the virus gives no reason to panic. He added that people should continue to take precautionary measures to prevent spreading disease.






TWO NEW CASES



Alberta Health and Wellness also confirmed that elsewhere in Alberta, two new cases have been recorded in northern Alberta and one in Calgary, bringing the provincial total to 15.

None of the patients have required hospitalization.



CLARA.HO
Edmonton Sun

@SUNMEDIA.CA

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                                 Swine flu goes person-to-pig; could it jump back?






         
Margie Mason,
Ap Medical Writer
May 4, 2009
MEXICO CITY

– Now that the swine flu virus has passed from a farmworker to pigs, could it jump back to people? The question is important, because crossing species again could make it more deadly.

The never-before-seen virus was created when genes from pig, bird and human viruses mixed together inside a pig. Experts fear the virus that has gone from humans back into pigs in at least one case could mutate further before crossing back into humans again. But no one can predict what will happen.

"Could it gain virulence? Yes," Juan Lubroth, an animal health expert at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said Sunday. "It could also become milder. It could go in both directions."

Canadian officials announced Saturday that the virus had infected about 200 pigs on a farm — the first evidence that it had jumped to another species. It was linked to a farmworker who recently returned from Mexico, where 19 people have died from the virus. The farmworker has recovered, and the mildly infected pigs have been quarantined.

Agriculture officials believe the worker may have sneezed or coughed near the pigs, possibly in a barn. About 10 percent of the herd experienced loss of appetite and fever, but all are recovering.

Experts say pork — even from infected pigs — is safe to eat.

Lubroth stressed that sick people should avoid contact with swine, but said healthy farmworkers don't need to take any extra precautions because the chance of catching flu from a pig is small.

Unlike the H5N1 bird flu virus, which infects the blood, organs and tissue of poultry, most swine flus are confined to the respiratory tract, meaning the risk of a human getting infected by a pig is "probably 10 or a 1,000 times less," Lubroth said.

But pigs are of special concern because they share some basic biological similarities with humans, and they have served as "mixing vessels" in which various flu strains have swapped genetic material. That's what happened to create the current swine flu strain.

Scientists are unsure when the virus leaped from pigs to humans — possibly months or even a year ago — but it was identified as a new strain about a week and a half ago. Since then, nearly 800 cases have been confirmed worldwide. The only death outside Mexico occurred when a Mexican toddler died in a Texas hospital.

There have been sporadic cases of pigs infecting humans with influenza in the past. Most cases resulted in mild symptoms, typically among people who were in close contact with sick pigs. A few deaths have been recorded, and limited human-to-human transmission also has been documented, but nothing sustained.

Dr. Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has worked on SARS and bird flu outbreaks, said there may be more pig-to-human cases that have gone unnoticed because surveillance among swine populations tends to be weaker than among poultry stocks.

Given that the past three flu pandemics — the 1918 Spanish flu, the 1957-58 Asian flu and the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 — were all linked to birds, much of the global pandemic preparedness has focused on avian flus.

"The world has been watching and preparing and trying to prevent a pandemic from an avian influenza reservoir," he said. "The focus has been on birds, and here is a virus that's coming from a swine reservoir. Now it's a human virus."