Swine flu, swine flu, swine flu!
August 20th, 2009 by admin
Today, Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture Charles Bronson did his part to aid America’s ailing pork industry by issuing a press release pleading with health officials and the media to stop using the term “swine flu.” Bronson claimed that use of the term is “contributing to the collapse of the pork industry.” (For the 100 million pigs slaughtered each year in the U.S., that would not be a bad thing.)
The term “swine flu” didn’t come from someone’s imagination. Swine flu got its name because the virus originated in pigs. (According to the Centers for Disease Control, “H1N1 is a new flu virus of swine origin that first caused illness in Mexico and the United States in March and April, 2009.”)
Commissioner Bronson is dishonest when he claims that the term is “inaccurate” and “incorrect.”