This has echoes of the OIE criticism of Britain in failing to request
that mutated circovirus was made notifiable a decade ago.

Now the problem looks much more widespread. The world's livestock vets
supposedly co-ordinated by the OIE are out of control and need to be
put under WHO supervision.

You can't have gangs of dodgy vets setting the rules for handling
human pandemics.

After what happened in Alberta, when Canadian government vets misled
the world for over a month, you would have thought that the OIE would
be getting their house in order.

If I knew that the Canadians were disseminating false information, and
published the story on May 9th, the OIE should have spotted it - and
done something - not left it to them to own up under media pressure a
month later.

http://www.hc2d.co.uk/content.php?contentId=11920

Pig influenza 'barely monitored'
26TH JUNE 2009

Healthcare Today

The 2009 pandemic influenza virus, H1N1, may not be under sufficient
surveillance in pigs to prevent new and more deadly strains emerging,
public health experts have warned.

The lack of surveillance means the virus is more likely to continue to
circulate between humans and pigs, making further mutations more
likely.

Animal health organisations are cautious about too keen a focus on
pigs, fearing an overreaction including mass culling of pigs, as
happened in Egypt. Trade bans on pigs and pork are another outcome
governments would like to avoid.

Bernard Vallat, director-general of the World Organisation for Animal
Health (OIE) made a statement just minutes after the World Health
Organisation (WHO) declared swine flu a pandemic on June 11.

He said the role of animals had not so far been demonstrated in either
the spread or development of the virus.

"So far the role of animals has not been demonstrated in the virus's
epidemiology or spread," he asserted.

Others say, however, that H1N1 may in fact be the product of minimal
flu surveillance in pigs in the years prior to the emergence of the
pandemic.

Hong Kong University flu geneticist Gavin Smith and colleagues said in
a recent report that lack of systematic swine surveillance allowed for
the undetected persistence and evolution of this potentially pandemic
strain for many years.

Smith says pigs have played an "obvious" role in the epidemiology of
swine flu. He also says it is possible that H1N1 has been circulating
between pigs and humans for many years.

So far, only pigs in Alberta, Canada, have been found to host the
pandemic strain of the virus. No-one knows how the herd became
infected.

UK laboratories have demonstrated that pigs can easily become infected
with the virus, and readily transmit it between themselves and shed it
into the environment.

Jimmy Smith, head of livestock affairs at the World Bank in Washington
DC, and a member of the organization's flu task force said it was
highly likely that more pigs were infected in more places than just
the one Canadian pig farm.

And OIE-FAO animal flu (OFFLU) expert Steve Edwards says that just
because there is no evidence to support the role of pigs in swine flu,
does not mean that they do not play a role.

Pigs have been far less the focus of laboratory networks like
Edwards', however, which have tended to focus on surveillance of
influenza viruses in poultry and wild birds, with pigs low on the
agenda.

Fears over the next pandemic influenza strain have traditionally
focused around the avian H5N1 flu virus, which leads to serious
disease in poultry and causes huge economic losses.

Any outbreaks must be reported in poultry or other birds, but similar
requirements are not in place for pigs. States may now voluntarily
report influenza in pigs, OIE says.

OFFLU says it has had only a limited response to suggestions that
countries share information on swine flu, which is usually seen as a
farming problems, and sequence any recent samples for genetic
analysis.