Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Gone viral

In the "well, duh" category comes this warning by Jorgen Schlundt, director of the World Health Organization's Department of Food Safety, Zoonoses and Foodborne Diseases:
"Sick animals should not enter the food chain. If you are following existing guidelines it (the virus) will not get into the human food chain," he said in an e-mail to Reuters reporter Tan Ee Lyn today.
It is possible for flu viruses such as the new H1N1 strain to survive the freezing process and be present in thawed meat, as well as in blood, Schlundt said. But the virus that has been sending folks to the hospital has been passed from human to human by airborne transmission, not from pig to human by foodborne transmission.

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