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Wednesday, Apr 29, 2009
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No threat to food chain: FAO

Gargi Parsai

NEW DELHI: The Food and Agriculture Organisation is mobilising its teams of experts to help ascertain if the new strain of swine influenza H1N1 virus, which has killed many people in Mexico, had a direct connection to pigs.

“There is no evidence of a threat to the food chain; at this stage it is a human crisis and not an animal crisis, but we have to be alert and prepared,” said FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech.

Urging governments to step up disease surveillance in swine, the FAO said it deployed a team of experts of the FAO OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) Crisis Management Centre - Animal Health (CMC-AH) to Mexico this week to help the government assess the epidemiologic situation in the pig production sector.

The U.N. agency has told its technical staff around the world to be on full alert, immediately report any influenza-like illness in swine stocks and forward specimens to FAO/OIE reference laboratories. According to the FAO, at present, transmission seems to be occurring solely from humans to humans. So far, evidence that the new strain of influenza virus entered the human population directly from pigs has not been established. Further analysis is planned to gain better insight.

“The first actions the FAO and others must take are to ascertain if the new strain is circulating in pigs, establish if there are any direct linkages between the illness in the human population and animals and explain how this new virus has obtained genetic materials from human, bird and pig influenza strains,” Mr. Domenech said.

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