US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is tired of hog farmers receiving a bad reputation from individuals who insist on referring to the A(H1N1) influenza pandemic as the “swine flu.”
“Each time the media uses the phrase ‘swine flu,’ a hog farmer, their workers and their families suffer,” Vilsack said in a statement. “It is simply not fair or correct to associate the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza with hogs, an animal that does not play a role in the ongoing transmission of the pandemic strain.”
When the flu strain first emerged in North America in April, a lot of officials called the illness the swine flu.
However, after the name caused several countries to prohibit imports of pork from the US, Canada and Mexico, the World Health Organization reviewed the disease and started calling it influenza A(H1N1).
The swine flu moniker has stayed and is detrimental to pig farmers.
Dave Warner, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council, feels that the US pork business was “heading in the right direction” when the flu outbreak first emerged in Mexico in April.
The industry suffered a difficult year in 2007, when an increase in grain and transportation prices meant farmers were losing a lot of money.
“But on April 24, hog futures prices were looking good. It looked like we would be seeing profits by about now,” Warner said to AFP, Yahoo News reports.
“Farmers could see light at the end of the tunnel. We were headed in the right direction and about to enter the summer grilling season where pork sales traditionally go up. But H1N1 essentially wiped out all of that.”
From April until mid-August, US pork producers saw their monetary losses nearly triple.
The industry lost 991 million dollars in only four months, Warner noted.
“At least half of that loss is attributable to H1N1 being called swine flu,” he added.
Even though 3,000 people have died from the A(H1N1) flu since April, no one caught the illness from consuming pork.
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