Swine Flu Info

[jabamba]

I had pork chops in my freezer that I was going to make for dinner tonight until my husband lifted an eyebrow at me about them so I decided to research a little, just in case

Comments

[supermouse]

You can eat them, just don't let them sneeze on you...

[jabamba]

Or make sure their snouts are covered with a tissue if they do? ;)

[supermouse]

And then WASH YOUR HANDS! before you touch your face or any commonly-touched surfaces.

Then you should be fine. Seriously, if your pork chops are sneezing, be extra, extra careful.

[jabamba]

No kidding, eh? I will be squirting the hand sanitizer DIRECTLY on them at that point!

[pant_girl]

Totally, its like most "scares" eg Ecoli, Salmonella, campylobacter etc. So long as the meat is prepared and cooked properly, you should have no probs :)

[jabamba]

Yup. I figured if I was curious then other people might be, too.

So yay! Pork chops for dinner! :)

[tattooedkingpin]

On top of all that, unless the chops you have came from a hog raised and processed in Mexico, there's no problem.

[jabamba]

Yes, this. Thanks :)

Although, living in Nevada, quite a lot of our meat does come from Mexico.

[noelleleithe]

Yeah, eating pork is no problem. Raising and/or slaughtering pigs, not so much. :)

[worldmage]

It's also not even really swine flu. The bug everyone's flipping out about has never been found in pigs. It just has genetic material similar to some swine flu viruses. It also has genetic material found in avian and human flu viruses, so they might as well have called it the Pigbirdman Flu. I guess "Pigbirdman flu" just isn't scary enough to keep people glued to their TV screens. :P

Edited for spelling fail.

[noelleleithe]

New influenza strains are classified based on characteristics of certain parts of their genome and on their relationship to previously identified strains. The current strain is influenza A subtype H1N1, which is mostly swine influenza, and it's very closely related to existing swine influensa strains. The relationships with human and avian strains are small, although the human connection is what allows it to spread between humans and the avian connection is what makes it more severe.

Anyway, that's why it's being called swine flu and not some other name, even though it was first isolated from people and not pigs. :)

[cstefano]

Well, I sure as heck would be glued to my TV if they were talking about pigbirdmen!