You cannot catch this virus from eating properly cooked and handled pork.
To
protect your pigs it will be necessary to implement strict biosecurity
measures and keep unnecessary visitors away from your animals.
Swine Flu is a virilent virus but you can minimize the risk to your farm with a few common sense procedures.
Pigs that are kept in an enclosed air space (intensive production) are much more at risk than pigs living outdoors, however, they are still susceptible to infection and if the virus does make its way into your herd, you can expect it to affect all pigs.
Minimizing Risk
- Keep unnecessary visitors away from the farm
- Minimize direct handling of the pigs, possibly limit the number of people that perform duties in close contact eg. feeding, farrowing, weighing.
- Keep overalls or spare cloths near pig handling areas and change in and out of them whenever you need to handling or feed the pigs.
- Wear a face mask. This will minimize any risk from coughing or sneezing and will act as a reminder not to touch your own face until you have thoroughly washed your hands after handling the pigs.
Swine Flu is easily spread so avoiding patting pigs for a while and if you must have visitors, question them about their recent activities: have they been overseas?, have they been near other pigs etc. Observe your visitors before they go anywhere near your pigs. Watch for signs of flu, fever, runny nose, coughing, sneezing - ask them to have their temperature taken. Do not risk the health of your animals by letting unscreened visitors on your farm.
Remember, shared air space is a real issue with swine flu and that the virus is inactivated by UV light. The virus will live much longer in a conducive environment such as inside crowded sheds.
If the Swine Flu virus was to infect a free range herd, it would have a shorter life span in an open, sunlit environment.
We are not aware at this stage of any measures Animal Health Australia plan to put into action in regard to herds infected by Swine Flu.
Read this fact sheet for more help and advice.
DPI Fact Sheet - Swine Infuenza
A swelling number of scientists believe swine flu
has not happened by accident. No: they argue that this global pandemic
– and all the deaths we are about to see – is the direct result of our
demand for cheap meat. So is the way we produce our food really making
us sick as a pig?
At first glance, this seems wrong. All through history, viruses have mutated,
and sometimes they have taken nasty forms that scythe through the human
population. This is an inescapable reality we just have to live with, like
earthquakes and tsunamis. But the scientific evidence increasingly suggests
that we have unwittingly invented an artificial way to accelerate the
evolution of these deadly viruses – and pump them out across the world. They
are called factory farms. They manufacture low-cost flesh, with a side-dish
of viruses to go.
To understand how this might happen, you have to compare two farms. My
grandparents had a pig farm in the Swiss mountains, with around 20 swine at
any one time. What happened there if, in the bowels of one of their pigs, a
virus mutated and took on a deadlier form? At every stage, the virus would
meet stiff resistance from the pigs' immune systems. They were living in
fresh air, on the diet they evolved with, and without stress – so they had a
robust ability to fight back. If the virus did take hold, it would travel
only as far as the sick hog could walk. So if the virus would then have
around 20 other pigs to spread and mutate in – before it would hit the end
of its own evolutionary path, and die off. If it was a really lucky, plucky
virus, it might make it to market – where it would come up against more
healthy pigs living in small herds. It had little opportunity to fan out
across a large population of pigs or evolve a strain that could be
transmitted to humans.
Now compare this to what happens when a virus evolves in a modern factory
farm. In most swine farms today, 6,000 pigs are crammed snout-to-snout in
tiny cages where they can barely move, and are fed for life on an artificial
pulp, while living on top of cess-pools of their own stale faeces.
Instead of having just 20 pigs to experiment and evolve in, the virus now has
a pool of thousands, constantly infecting and reinfecting each other. The
virus can combine and recombine again and again. The ammonium from the waste
they live above burns the pigs' respiratory tracts, making it easier yet for
viruses to enter them. Better still, the pigs' immune systems are in
free-fall. They are stressed, depressed, and permanently in panic, making
them far easier to infect. There is no fresh air or sunlight to bolster
their natural powers of resistance. They live in air thick with viral loads,
and they are exposed every time they breathe in. To read more ..
Story
A recent pork industry article
accused a number of groups of using the Swine Flu outbreak “to
advance their anti-modern agriculture and animal rights' agendas.” Maybe it could be viewed more as exposing the risks modern agriculture
presents and its disregard for animal welfare?
The article goes on to say “Modern
housing protects animals from predators, disease, bad weather and extreme
climates. Today's buildings also are well-ventilated, well-lit,
clean and scientifically designed to meet an animal's specific needs
undefined including temperature, light, water and food”
I am not sure of what predators
they speak of but can’t quite understand why pigs should be
singled out as needing such protection.
What of sheep, goats, cattle, deer?
Protected from disease? With the overuse of antibiotics I
wonder? As for bad
weather and extremes of climate, pigs, just like any other animal on
this planet, are equipped to take care of themselves in their
natural environment. How
well protected are pigs in ‘today’s buildings’ from fire?
Only last week 10,000 sows perished in a blaze in such
buildings.
Modern pig sheds may well meet
the pigs most basic needs like food, water and light (although I
think this should be sunlight), but, what about their need for
exercise, mental stimulation, interaction with their herd, nurturing
their young, natural copulation or the ability to indulge any kind
of natural behaviours?
We are also to believe that
modern pig sheds are easy to clean and reduce the spread of
disease. Then why
aren’t they? Modern
pigs sheds are incubators for disease and the amount of antibiotics
used by the industry is testament to that.
It’s a matter of keeping the pigs alive until they are
killed. If we were to
ban the systematic use of antibiotics in meat production, would the
‘modern’ pig industry survive?
Biosecurity on farms is about
trying to stop disease from entering the herd, not stopping it from
escaping. Bio-containment
isnt given as much attention.