Transmission Lines

The World Health Organization says a farm worker in Alberta, Canada caught the flu while visiting Mexico, then infected about 220 pigs from a herd of 2,200 — or 10 percent of the herd - on return:



Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO senior scientist on food safety, said: "As long as pork is cooked the way we normally cook meat, there is no problem and no risk at all to get this disease." Studies have shown that flu viruses are usually killed during processing and, if not, by the heat applied during cooking.

Embarek was not surprised that the virus (H1N1 2009) could be transmitted both ways.