Swine flu is in the news all around the world.In this country, President Obama created a national emergency for the disease in order to let federal agencies cut through red tape to effectively combat it. What is swine flu?

The swine flu viruses do not normally affect humans although occasional human infections with swine flu have occurred.  Usually these cases occur in persons with direct exposure to pigs. There have been documented cases of one person spreading swine flu to others. For example, an outbreak of apparent swine flu infection in pigs in Wisconsin in 1988 resulted in multiple human infections, and, although no community outbreak resulted, there was antibody evidence of virus transmission from the patient to health care workers who had close contact with the patient.

Swine flu viruses can be directly transmitted from pigs to people and from people to pigs. Human infection with flu viruses from pigs are most likely to occur when people are in close proximity to infected pigs, such as in pig barns and livestock exhibits housing pigs at fairs. Human-to-human transmission of swine flu can also occur. This is thought to occur in the same way as seasonal flu occurs in people, which is mainly person-to-person transmission through coughing or sneezing of people infected with the influenza virus. People may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.

Can you catch swine flu by eating pork and other hog products?  Nobody knows for sure.  Obviously people with a vested interest in the pork industry will say that you can’t.  Others have said it is possible. In my opinion, if you can pick up trichinosis from undercooked pork, why can’t you pick up the swine flu viruses.  Trichinosis is a parasitic disease caused by the roundworm Trichinella spiralis. If someone ingests undercooked or raw meat with the encysted larvae, the stomach acid releases the larvae which mature to adults in the intestine.  If roundworms can survive the cooking process, why couldn’t a virus?

Recently the World Health Organization quietly announced that it was dropping the term swine flu. The new virus that still threatens a global pandemic, it said, would now be referred to as influenza A(H1N1).  This decision was to soothe the pork industry, which has seen its sales collapse since consumers began to associate pigs with disease.

Why do pigs carry this disease?  The pork industry has the practice of confining pigs in large barns where viruses can pass back and forth between animals, from them to swine workers and finally to the community at large.  These are factory farms at the worst.  The hogs are kept in confined locations, unable to move and are subject to chemicals to keep them alive.  They have virtually no resistance to any disease.  The hogs are never checked for swine flu before they are shipped off to the slaughterhouse. Yet while all forms of swine husbandry carry the risk of flu, evidence is building that large-scale industrial farming is even more susceptible. A major U.S. study last year, carried out by the Pew Charitable Trust and Johns Hopkins University, concluded that factory farming presents an "unacceptable level of risk to public health."  The study said; "While transmission of new or novel viruses from animals to humans, such as avian or swine influenza, seems a rather infrequent event today, the continual cycling of viruses and other pathogens in large herds or flocks increases opportunities...through mutation or recombination events that could result in more efficient human-to-human transmission." Pigs confined in such places, suffer stress that leaves them more susceptible to disease. Weaned quickly after birth, most lack the natural defenses against disease that mother's milk provides.

In a 2007 paper written for the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the University of Iowa's Thorne and five other experts came to similar conclusions. Large-scale factory farms facilitate the rapid transmission and mixing of swine flu viruses such as H1N1. If industrial hog farms are too close to avian operations (such as chicken farms) the danger of a serious flu pandemic increases yet again.  This same paper noted that influenza “can be transmitted via water, air, consumption or handling of meat products.” The World Health Organization (WHO) also said it was possible for flu viruses to survive the freezing process and be present in thawed meat, as well as in blood.  “Meat from sick pigs or pigs found dead should not be processed or used for human consumption under any circumstances,” Jorgen Schlundt, director of WHO’s Department of Food Safety, Zoonoses and Foodborne Diseases.  How do we know the meat we buy from our supermarkets doesn’t come from sick animals.

The pork industry will swear that it is perfectly safe to eat pork chops, ham, bacon and hot dogs, but the pesticide industry also swears that their products are safe.  I would have a hard time believing anyone who has a vested interest in any industry when it comes to safety.

The beef industry is equally bad when it comes to human safety.  Mad cow disease has been downplayed by the federal government, almost to the point of a cover-up in an effort to protect the beef industry. What exactly is mad cow disease and how concerned should we be?

Mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is a brain disease caused by unconventional pathogens known as prions. Prions are literally infectious proteins that are practically invulnerable, surviving temperatures hot enough to melt lead. It is thought that cattle originally got BSE from eating diseased sheep parts mixed in their food.  Sheep get a form of encephalopathy known as scrapie. In humans, prions can cause Creutzfelt-Jakob disease (CJD), a human spongiform encephalopathy, which can result in blindness and epilepsy as one’s brain becomes riddled with tiny holes. There are two  forms of CJD in humans, sporadic and variant. Sporadic seems to strike one in a million people for no apparent reason, while variant CJD has been linked to mad cow disease.

Research in Europe has suggested that there may be a link between variant and sporadic CJD and they both might involve eating meat. It is presently illegal to feed cow parts to other cattle in their feed, but it is not illegal to feed it to pigs (or chickens). The FDA allows this exemption because no naturally occurring porcine spongiform encephalopathy has ever been found. However, pigs are killed when they are about five months of age, long before symptoms would develop. How do we know that the BSE prions aren’t transferred from cattle, through pigs in the form of hot dogs and sausage, into humans, where they can ultimately develop into variant CDJ?

Can chickens and turkeys carry the prions and transfer them to humans? We don’t know the answers to these questions, but we do know it may be possible. Right now it is only speculation, but the circumstantial evidence is compelling. Also, studies have shown that neither CJD nor Alzheimer’s disease can be conclusively diagnosed without a brain biopsy, as the symptoms and pathology of both diseases overlap. One scientist suggests that Alzheimer’s may be a prion disease as well. Alzheimer’s is now the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S., afflicting close to four million Americans. Can there be a link between CJD, Alzheimer’s and eating meat? At this point we don’t know. Is it worth the risk to order that fried chicken, hot dog or factory farm murder burger?  I don’t think so. I can’t make the judgment whether eating meat is good for you or not. I stopped eating meat years and I feel better now than I ever did before. Even if mad cow disease wasn’t an issue, the barbaric way we treat the animals we eat is enough to make me not want to participate.

Should we stop eating pork to avoid getting swine flu?  I don’t know and no one knows for sure.  Why take a chance and eat something that may seriously affect your health or your children’s health?There are much safer foods to dine on than pork and beef products.