Jan Shepel
Associate Editor
WISCONSIN DELLS
As pork producers gathered for their annual meeting held in conjunction with the Corn/Soy Expo last week, the H1N1 virus outbreak was a key topic.
Dr. Paul Sundburg of the National Pork Board said the industry’s response when the misnomer “swine flu” began to hurt pork producers was collaboration at its best. When the virus struck and the news coverage began to impact consumers’ perceptions, the pork board assembled a crisis team.
That included veterinarians who specialize in hogs, state pork groups and other stakeholders who responded with a number of programs and a slogan – “Let’s keep pork, and all the facts, on the table.”
Sundburg said the group worked through the summer, contacting all the major media outlets with their message that pork was safe and that the novel virus could not be caught by eating pork. They also did consumer research to determine where people would accept and trust a message. They found that people trusted the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as well as infectious disease experts and the World Health Organization.
“We worked with them on statements,” he told pork producers at their Wisconsin Dells meeting. “We had to get the message out. We worked very hard on it.”
It helped when USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, called out the media telling reporters to “Call it H1N1!” Sundburg said.
The markets overreacted, and the industry expected an impact on demand but there’s very little evidence that it had an effect. Fresh pork tonnage in 2009 was significantly higher than 2008. “We’d like to think that our messaging had an impact there,” Sundburg said.
There will continue to be reporting of novel flu viruses in people. Sundburg expects that there will be more cases of H1N1, and the experience is likely to put a microscope on the USDA and its farm surveillance programs.
Dr. Christopher Olsen, of the University of Wisconsin Veterinary School, told producers that most pigs who get this flu will be only mildly affected. Once they have recovered, he said, they can be moved.
“It was a big deal to the get the USDA to that point,” he said. “That lessens the Draconian response that quarantines everything.”
Sundburg said state veterinarians work with attending vets and with producers to handle any outbreaks that might occur.
Olsen said the H1N1 outbreak provides an opportunity for developing a comprehensive and integrated surveillance system for swine health. If such a system had been in place when the first mystery diseases in hogs had occurred, they might have been nipped in the bud.
An overarching surveillance plan will allow better understanding of endemic swine disease, detect emerging diseases in pigs and provide information that will support international trade. They will be able to tell trading partners “we don’t have it and we can prove it,” he said.
The fact that swine producers don’t want to test for these novel diseases like H1N1 is understandable, Olsen said. “They don’t want the stigma of being identified as a farm with this disease. But without that we won’t be able to understand what’s happening in the swine business.”
Testing would help the industry develop new diagnostic tools and vaccines. According to Olsen, some of the vaccines in use in pigs today are based on virus strains from five to 10 years ago. Improvements in testing programs would also help with public education, making the distinction between perception and reality.
“There’s nothing different about protecting pigs from this virus,” he said, as compared to others. Overall health and nutrition are important, as well as controlling animal and human movement and worker vaccination plans.
One thing the industry may never know is where this flu strain originated and when. “Most believe it was Asia but we’ll probably never know,” he said. It could have developed as far back as 10 years ago, he added.
