COMensarations
Saturday, November 12, 2005
This Is NOT a Good Indicator
Bird flu has jumped to pigs.
According to THIS report, it looks like we’ll all become vegans. Either that or start eating sushi, if the report is accurate. But good sushi is hard to come by here along the Front Range.
As I had commented earlier, between this bird flu and the mad cow, the price of meat is going to go through the roof. Now pork is at risk.
Better start stocking in beans as a source of protein. Fortunately pinto beans are really cheap....for the moment.
The good news is that this event occured in 2004. But we have not heard of massive die-offs of pigs. The indicator, however, is that this virus can jump from one large group, in this case from class avis (birds) to class mammalia (including pigs). Guess what....we Homo sapiens are of the class ‘mammalia’ too. So there is something of a ‘risk’ here.
I suspect that the reason we have not heard of more pigs dying is because the herd that died, was not interacting with other herds of pigs, as migratory birds interact with other birds.
The point remains, that, if the report is accurate, this virus IS subject to mutations that can allow it to jump from the bird population to the mammalian.