CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Dangerous Squeals

A leaflet produced by the UK Health and Safety Executive warning of the dangers of squealing pigs has caught the attention of the British media.

Apparently a large group of pigs in intensive housing can create noise levels of 100 decibels or above, especially just before they are fed. Farmers are advised to either wear hearing protection or avoid the animals until they are fed and contented. (This is less of an issue for farmers with automated feeding systems that can be switched on from the outside).

Wild and Woolly 2009

I recently went llama trekking and thoroughly enjoyed it. Up close, the llama (Lama glama) not only sports rather glamorous long eyelashes but also has the most amazing fibrous coat. This reminded me that 2009 is the International Year of Natural Fibres (IYNF) – a year of all things wild and woolly!

FAO have deemed 2009 as the International Year to highlight the importance of natural fibres and their many uses, not only to producers and industry, but also to consumers and the environment.

IYNF, or “Wild and Woolly 2009”, as it’s also known, has a great website with profiles of natural fibres from abaca to alpaca to silk and sisal. Here you can find out about events taking place throughout the year, and find out why, in a world of synthetics, natural fibres should be the natural choice.

Further reading

FAO (2009). Discover natural fibres 2009. Common Fund for Commodities. Proceedings of the Symposium on Natural Fibres. Rome, 20 October 2008. Technical Paper No. 56.

Photo courtesy of Isobel Hoskins

Man Flu Really Exists, New Study Shows

Man flu is considered by large segments of society to be the psychological condition of men with colds. It is often said that when men have a cold they think it is a flu and as a consequence they moan more than women and stay longer in bed until they feel better.

Man flu is not to be confused with the current H1N1 pandemic flu which is affecting humans in some 40 countries. There has also been one swine case on a farm in Canada.

H1N1 Flu Panic Hits Pigs and Producers Hard

More than a month since the first reports of influenza in humans in Mexico, the first case of the H1N1 influenza in pigs has been reported. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced on 2 May that a H1N1 influenza virus was found in a pig herd in Alberta. Since then, the CFIA has assured the public that the outbreak on the Alberta farm has been fully contained and that additional analyses of the virus have confirmed that the virus is the human strain. It is highly probable that the pigs were exposed to the virus from a farm worker who had recently returned from Mexico and had been exhibiting flu-like symptoms. Signs of illness were subsequently observed in the pigs, but both the farm worker and all of the pigs are recovering or have recovered.

The outbreak came as the World Health Organisation agreed that the virus should be called influenza A (H1N1) rather than “swine flu”.

Although this outbreak remains the only confirmed case of H1N1 influenza in pigs so far, and although in this case the virus was transmitted from a man to the pigs, a number of countries have resorted to using panic measures to prevent spread of non-existent “swine flu” even before this outbreak, which have had a significant negative impact on welfare of pigs and pig farming.

For example, Egypt has reportedly culled its entire pig population (approximately 250,000 animals) without any evidence of disease in pigs, which has prompted the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) to issue a statement that there is no need to slaughter animals in view of preventing circulation of the influenza A (H1N1) virus.

In Afghanistan, a pig has been quarantined at Kabul Zoo after visitors raised concerns it could infect them with “swine flu”. According to media reports, this is Afghanistan's only known pig, because pigs and pork products are illegal in this country for religious reasons.

The pig industry has also suffered significant financial losses due to the suspension of imports of live pigs and pork products by dozens of countries.

The US National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) has stated that the US pork industry is almost on the verge of financial disaster and has called on everyone working in the pork industry to address “influenza outbreak misinformation”. The NPPC statement also adds that the media still make reference to the current influenza as "swine flu” despite the consensus of international scientific organizations, including the World Health Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Agriculture that this is not "swine flu", but influenza A (H1N1).

Since the flu outbreak first hit the news headlines, producers have lost $6 per pig, which has cost the industry about $2.5 million per day, according to the NPPC.

Pigs Escape Influenza, but They Get Slaughtered Anyway

Since the first reports of a new strain of H1N1 influenza virus causing human casualties in Mexico, and then in other countries there has been a deluge of news, special reports, opinions and interviews on the topic. Most of them erroneously refer to the disease as “Swine Flu”.

However, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the new virus has both human and avian influenza genetic sequences in addition to genetic sequences from swine influenza virus.

Given that the new virus has not been isolated from pigs in Mexico or anywhere else, pig producers and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) have justifiably argued that the use of the term - “swine influenza” is misleading and damaging to the pig farming industry. The OIE issued a statement on Monday suggesting that the new disease should be labelled “North American Influenza,” in keeping with a tradition of naming influenza pandemics after the regions where they were first identified, including Spanish flu of 1918 to 1919, Asian flu of 1957 to 1958 and Hong Kong flu of 1967 to 1968.

However, despite the OIE statement and the fact that no case of influenza in pigs is confirmed, individual countries have been introducing various measures to prevent further spread of the disease via pigs. Some countries, including China, European Union and Russia, have banned the import of live pigs and pork products, which has immediately led to a 10% fall in prices of pork meat. Even more drastic measures have been reported in attempts to prevent further spread of “swine influenza”. According to media reports, Egypt has ordered culling of its entire pig population.

It appears that health professionals are taking notice of the importance of using correct terminology to describe the current disease and have been using terms such as “influenza” or “H1N1 virus” rather than “swine influenza”. For example, Dr Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, announced in her statement that the WHO has raised the current level of “influenza“ pandemic alert from phase 4 to phase 5, and did not refer to the term “swine flu”. Similarly, the US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack went out of his way at a press conference in Washington to refer to the virus as the "H1N1 virus" stating "This is not a food-borne illness, virus -- it is not correct to refer to it as swine flu because really that's not what this is about."

However, the media still continue to use the term “swine flu” widely to describe the disease, and therefore it is not surprising that pigs are being culled, without any evidence of influenza in pigs.

Swine flu or North-American influenza?

A better name for the influenza virus causing alarm around the world may be 'North-American influenza' rather than 'swine influenza' the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) has suggested. The reason for this proposal is that the virus has not actually been isolated from pigs to date. OIE points out that in the past, many human influenza epidemics with animal origin have been named using their geographic name, eg Spanish influenza or Asiatic influenza, thus it would be logical to call this disease "North-American influenza".

Ticks in a changing climate

My first venture into the world of blogging, nearly two years ago now, discussed tickborne diseases in the UK, and mentioned that as ticks flourish in warm wet climates, climate change might increase the risk of such diseases. A colleague recently drew my attention to a review article¹ about the effects of climate change on ticks and the diseases that they carry in Europe. This looked at changes that have happened already and those that might happen if, as predicted by the IPCC, temperatures in northern Europe rise by 1.5 to 2.5ºC over the next few decades (if they rise more than that, we will probably have more serious problems to worry about).

Review of 2008

On behalf of all the authors of the blog, and CABI,  I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and thank all of our readers for the comments supplied throughout the year. I hope these will continue and flourish onwards during 2009. Sorry for the delay in this post, but its finally here, it is our annual review of the Hand Picked...and Carefully Sorted blog, (also please check out our 2007 review).

We had another successful year of blogging during 2008, turning 2 years old on the 2nd November and posting a total of 148 articles.

Continue after the break for the complete monthly breakdown of all our posts.

Save the Guinea worm?

Earlier in December I came across this blog entry about the Guinea worm, a parasite you really don't want to be infected with. For more information about it, follow the link in the previous sentence, or this one about efforts by the Carter Center (founded by former US President Jimmy Carter) to eradicate it. The worm relies on humans to complete its life cycle, so there is no reservoir of infection in other species, and infection can be avoided by measures as simple as filtering drinking water through fine cloth; as a result, these efforts have been very successful, reducing the number of cases from 3.5 million in Africa alone in 1986 to less than 5000 (all in a few African countries) in 2008.

Bringing the mammoth back from the dead

In a very interesting news feature in Nature, Henry Nicholls discusses the real possibilities of inverting the course of evolution by bringing the mammoth back to life.
During the last decades, hundreds of animal genomes have been published and the genome of the charismatic extinct Mamuthus primignenius has very recently joined the list.
Henry Nicholls’s paper summarizes the steps required to build up a mammoth from the genome to a living beast. He states that the whole process would involve: (1) “knowing exactly the sequences needed, (2) synthesizing a full set of chromosomes with the sequences, (3) transferring the nucleus into an egg and finally (4) transferring the egg into a womb…”
He says, none of the steps is currently possible.