Can eating chicken and mutton cause swine flu??

Dr Mandeep Singh Azad and Dr Manmeet Motan
Poultry sales declined by 95 percent in Valley markets after panic-striken people stopped its consumption fearing spread of H1N1 virus. Since the outbreak of this deadly disease rumors were rife that poultry consumption also leads to H1N1 virus.”Almost 95 percent sales have gone down.  People are afraid to consume chickens now. The false rumors have spoiled meat  business  and poultry farms in the valley are incurring huge losses “as shopkeepers have stopped to take the delivery from the dealers”.”There are no buyers. Shopkeepers have stopped taking the poultry in bulk due to decrease in its sales,” The poultry farmers are forced to sale their birds at half the wholesale price which they used to get and are not been able to recover the price they spend on feed and medicine There are many farmers who have started this eneterprise on subsidy loan based Government schemes and are now not able to pay their intresets to banks because of heavy loses .
The sudden outbreak of the H1N1 virus has left most of us so dreaded that we avoid chicken and poultry, thinking that it will lead to the disease. The vegetable consumption in most parts of the country is soaring up because of chicken fret. There have also been reports that going vegan can effectively help you combat swine flu. However, precautions of swine flu do not include don’ts for eating chicken. In fact, chicken is associated with bird flu or H1N5 virus, which was a threat back in 2005. Swine flu, on the other hand, is caused by influenza A virus of the subtype H1N1. Bird flu can be transmitted when you consume chicken, but swine flu has only human to human transmission and no other source of transmission has been identified till date. Steps should be taken regarding the actual transit of the H1N1 virus. Swine flu is transmitted by airborne droplets from an infected person’s sneeze or cough, or from germs from hand and germ-laden surfaces. It is not a food-borne illness and cannot be transmitted by food. Here are few swine flu facts you should know.
When chicken is cooked at 60-degree centigrade or above, the virus and the bacteria present in it are inactivated which makes chicken safe for consumption. Cooking chicken properly is vital not because of the swine flu virus but because chicken can be carriers of salmonella, E.coli and other nasty bugs. The consumption of raw food products and incompletely cooked meat and poultry is a high-risk practice and should be discouraged.
To avoid contamination, make sure that you take care of these safety measures while you are preparing chicken.
Swine influenza, also called pig influenza, swine flu, hog flu and pig flu, is an infection caused by any one of several types of swine influenza viruses. Swine influenza virus (SIV) or swine-origin influenza virus (S-OIV) is any strain of the influenza family of viruses that is endemic inpigs. As of 2009, the known SIV strains include influenza C and the subtypes of influenza A known as H1N1, H1N2, H2N1, H3N1, H3N2, andH2N3.Swine influenza virus is common throughout pig populations worldwide. Transmission of the virus from pigs to humans is not common and does not always lead to human flu, often resulting only in the production of antibodies in the blood. If transmission does cause human flu, it is called zoonotic swine flu. People with regular exposure to pigs are at increased risk of swine flu infection.
Around the mid-20th century, identification of influenza subtypes became possible, allowing accurate diagnosis of transmission to humans. Since then, only 50 such transmissions have been confirmed. These strains of swine flu rarely pass from human to human. Symptoms of zoonotic swine flu in humans are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general, namely chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe   coughing, weakness and general discomfort.In August 2010, the World Health Organization declared the swine flu pandemic officially over. Swine influenza was first proposed to be a disease related to human flu during the 1918 flu pandemic, when pigs became ill at the same time as humans. The first identification of an influenza virus as a cause of disease in pigs occurred about ten years later, in 1930. For the following 60 years, swine influenza strains were almost exclusively H1N1. Then, between 1997 and 2002, new strains of three different subtypes and five different genotypes emerged as causes of influenza among pigs in North America. In 1997-1998, H3N2 strains emerged. These strains, which include genes derived by reassortment from human, swine and avian viruses, have become a major cause of swine influenza in North America. Reassortment between H1N1 and H3N2 produced H1N2. The H1N1 form of swine flu is one of the descendants of the strain that caused the 1918 flu pandemic. As well as persisting in pigs, the descendants of the 1918 virus have also circulated in humans through the 20th century, contributing to the normal seasonal epidemics of influenza. However, direct transmission from pigs to humans is rare, with only 12 recorded cases in the U.S. since 2005. Nevertheless, the retention of influenza strains in pigs after these strains have disappeared from the human population might make pigs a reservoir where influenza viruses could persist, later emerging to reinfect humans once human immunity to these strains has waned.
Swine flu (swine influenza) is a respiratory disease caused by viruses (influenza viruses) that infect the respiratory tract of pigs, resulting in nasal secretions, a barking cough, decreased appetite, and listless behavior. Swine flu is transmitted from person to person by inhalation or ingestion of droplets containing virus from people sneezing or coughing; it is not transmitted by eating cooked pork products or poultry or mutton products.So there is no effect of swine flu transmission by eating poultry meat,egg or mutton. These meat products are completely safe for consumption after proper cooking it .

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