Can You Get Swine Flu from Pigs? [UPDATED]

The short answer is NO [update - not from eating them]. Swine flu is a mutation of the influenza virus resulting from the cross-breeding of the swine, avian (aka bird flu), and human viruses. The idea that one could contract “swine flu”, as the H1N1 virus is being touted, from pigs is non-sense since swine to human transmission of the virus is almost unheard of. Add to that the fact that if you get a flu virus from pigs, it is probably going to be the swine version of the virus without the human and avian mutations.

In other words, culling of swine herds world-wide is hysteria based idiocy.

You cannot get “swine flu” from eating pork. Nor can you get it from farming pigs because pigs cannot and will not be carrying the H1N1 virus. The panic being caused by labeling the H1N1 Influenza virus “Swine Flu” is on the verge of becoming a pandemic in-itself.

On a side note…

Even if pork were the carriers of H1N1, you cannot get the virus from eating the meat. Unless you eat it raw that is. Because if you cook pork the way that pork is supposed to be cooked – due to Salmonella concerns – you would be killing off the virus anyway.

So relax and don’t worry about pigs already. You are more likely going to catch it from another biped not a 4-legged oinker.

UPDATE:

From Big Dog:

This is not correct. Pigs do carry the H1N1 virus but it is not indigenous to them. H1N1 is a human virus but it mutated with several other viruses to make what they are calling swine flu.

The H1N1 that you are seeing now is a subclass of the virus that mutated from two swine viruses, and avian virus and human virus. You most certainly can get the virus from pigs (but not eating properly cooked pork). Though it is unusual to have swine flu transmit ti humans it can for people who work closely with the animals. Human to human transmission is usually not seen.

However, since the influenza type A viruses replicate in cellular RNA they do not get complete genetic coding and variants can occur. The four viruses I named were in a pig which was the host. They combined and were able to be transmitted to human in a process known as antigenic shift.

Keep in mind, normally swine flu virus cannot (or rarely) transmits to humans but since it is an RNA virus it can mutate and make a subspecies which would then be able to transmit to humans.

You cannot get it from eating them but you can get it from them.

If an antigenic shift takes place with avian flu allowing it to transmit to humans and from human to human we will have problems.

Seeings how Big Dog is in the health care field, I trust his info on this one and defer to his data. But I stand behind my info about eating pork. Especially since it has been confirmed by Big Dog and the CDC. Thanks BD.

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