Second Look: The misnamed swine flu and the CBC's lame response

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The double talk from the CBC brass and other media outlets about the misnomer for H1N1 is costing Canadian hog producers somewhere between $8 and $12 million a week

by LARRY MARTIN

I guess some people still question whether the misnamed swine flu has affected the market for pork. The chart for July futures prices has a gap in late April, when the outbreak occurred. July futures were trading in the US$72-$75 range before the gap. After, it looks like a map to Florida, dropping rapidly to the $65 range and bottoming out at $57.50. That makes the difference between current prices around $125-$130, equivalent to over $170 in Canada.

It will be some time before we have enough data to prove exactly how much of the drop was because of the fear associated with it and how much due to other factors. For example, according to DTN reports Midwestern slaughter weights are five pounds heavier than last year, adding more burdensome supply to the market. But there is so much anecdotal data about people and countries backing off North American pork that I'm guessing we'll find at least 75 per cent of the drop is due to the demand shift.

And the media are both to blame and irresponsible. Many people have seen the lame letter from a senior person at CBC, whose dodo response included conversations with their so-called experts as part of their rationale.

So why isn't the World Health Organization enough of an expert? If they needed more expert advice, they might have tried the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. If you go to their website, the first thing you'll find is that there is no listing for "Swine Flu." However, there is a listing under H1N1 and here is what it says about what to call it.

"This virus was originally referred to as "swine flu" because laboratory testing showed that many of the genes in this new virus were very similar to influenza viruses that normally occur in pigs in North America. But further study has shown that this new virus is very different from what normally circulates in North American pigs. It has two genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia and avian genes and human genes. Scientists call this a 'quadruple reassortant' virus."

The other interesting aspect of the lame letter from CBC brass is that they decided not to change the name after getting it wrong because they didn't want to confuse their listeners. However, at the same time, CBC always pointed out in stories during April and early May that people cannot get the disease from eating pork. Apparently, they no longer need to say this because "I think Canadians are now largely aware that is the case."  So, the bottom line is that Canadians are very smart and they now know that there is no threat from eating pork, even though they are way too stupid to figure out that what was misnamed swine flu is really novel H1N1. 

I doubt if I'm as smart as this CBC official thinks he is. But I think I'm smart enough not to buy his double talk and to figure out that he and his media cronies are costing Canadian hog producers somewhere between $8 and $12 million a week. And that's a crime.

Larry Martin is a research fellow at the George Morris Centre and former chair of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Business, University of Guelph.