The American Veterinary Medical Association has released a statement saying that human exposure to pigs and consumption of pork products will not increase your risk of infection with swine flu. Thus far, the swine flu has only been identified and transmitted among humans. There have been no reports of outbreaks among swine herds. In fact, the term “swine flu” is a misnomer since this strain is actually composed of a combination of viruses that include swine, poultry and human influenza viruses. And today, the World Health Organization announced that they will no longer be using the term “swine flu” to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs. Instead the proper, scientific name H1N1 influenza A will be used. With that being said, the AVMA is also reminding us to follow proper cooking guidelines for all meat products to reduce the incidence of food borne illnesses such as salmonella.
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Tags: American Veterinary Medical Association, AVMA, flu, H1N1, influenza, meat, pigs, pork, Swine flu, WHO
Dr. Steven Chang, the author of DailyDose, is a staff physician with Kosmix RightHealth. Dr. Chang practices Family Medicine at the University of California Davis Medical Center, where his medical interests include both pediatric and geriatric care, public health, gay and lesbian health, and sleep medicine. Dr. Chang trained at the Stanford University affiliated O'Connor Hospital, and was a research fellow at the National Institute of Health. He holds an M.D. from McGill University and a BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
May 1st, 2009 at 2:03 pm
[...] the way, in case you haven’t heard, you can’t catch the swine flu from eating pork products. So feel free to dig into that platter of ribs that are tempting [...]
May 2nd, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I think the scientist needs to stop putting different dieseases in the air for people to be test dummies , becausepeople should have a choose if they want to be a test dummy thars why yall have the hospitals that do ressearch and they pay people to come to their hospital.
May 3rd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
YOUR HIGHER FACULTIES OF LOGIC IS FURTHER ERODED BY YOUR ADDICTIVE DENIAL OF COMMON SENSE. THE VIRUS IS BORNE IN PIGS,HOGS,SWINE,PORK
ALL THE DOCTORS…RABBIS.. IMAMS…PRIESTS AND THOUSANDS OF BOOKS
AND EXPERIMENTS HAVE BEEN DONE ON THIS MUTATION WITH 3 STOMACHES.
REBELLIOUS STUPIDITY AND DAMAGED INTELLIGENCE IS THE ONLY THING
THAT WOULD JUSTIFY “COOKING A VIRUS” THEN EATING IT.