Word: swine
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...addition, Vilsack took the opportunity to ask - indeed, plead - with the media to desist forever from use of the misnomer swine flu, which has been the cause of many of the pork industry's woes. "It may seem silly," said Vilsack, "unless you're a pork producer. Then, you have to tell your family you can't afford to pay the bills because you're now selling your product for less than it cost you to produce it." (Read "Amid Swine Flu Fears, the Pork Market Falls...
...soon after the first reports of the so-called swine flu emerged in the spring of 2009 that the already soft hog market practically collapsed. In China, a major consumer of U.S. pork, fully two-thirds of the 1.3 billion population stopped eating pork altogether, and Beijing responded with a ban on any pork produced in North Carolina, Iowa or Oklahoma. Russia and Ukraine followed with prohibitions of their own, and soon there were 27 countries that wanted nothing to do with any hog raised in America. Institutional buyers in the U.S. grew skittish too, as did big state...
...markets to start buying U.S. pork again, and Vilsack said he would lean on the international trading partners who haven't yet lifted their U.S. pork bans. "Among the ones who have been open to reason and logic," he says tartly, "many of the barriers are already down." (Read "Swine Flu: Don't Blame...
...course, no H1N1 has been detected in any actual swine in the U.S., and even if it were, Vilsack stressed - his voice sometimes betraying a how-many-times-must-I-repeat-this weariness - people could not get sick by eating infected pork. H1N1 is not a hog-specific virus, Vilsack reminded reporters. "Swine flu has been present in the United States for 80 years," he said. "But H1N1 is different. It's a novel flu strain. Its genetic makeup is unique. The virus is connected to strains from three species - avian, human and swine. Unfortunately, the media gravitated toward...
...beyond the government's fiscal assistance, Vilsack maintains that the media still hold the greatest sway over potential U.S. pork consumers. "People hear the President or some other official say once or twice that pork is safe," Vilsack said, "and then they hear the term swine flu on TV and the Internet 50 times in a single day." The blame-the-media fallback is surely overstated, but for pork farmers trying to move the merch, less swine and more H1N1 in headlines will nonetheless be welcome...