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No reason to ban U.S. pork exports, Vilsack says

Hog and pork markets have declined sharply so far this week – and one reason is they’re reactingto China and Russia banning U.S. pork exports. U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says there’s no real reason for those bans, “I think it’s important to emphasize that swine flu viruses are not transmitted by food, so a person can’t get swine flu from eating pork or pork products. Our tradingpartners should know as we do that cooking pork to an internal temperatures kills all viruses and all foodborne pathogens. So if you eat properly handled and properly cooked pork or pork products, it’s safe. So we’re reaching out to make sure our trading partners are fully aware of that. We believewe should be able to continue doing business for our pork industry and for our pork products.” Vilsack says he’ll keep sending that message to U.S. pork customers.

The U.S. exports pork to 80 nations and the US Meat Export Federation says it’s working with all sectorsof the pork industry and US trade officials to assure trading partners that US pork is safe. USMEF President and CEO Philip Seng says the reaction so far has been mixed, “We’ve had countries who have actually announced that they want to either close their markets temporarily or basically keeptheir markets regulated through 100 percent testing of shipments coming in. So we feel that we need to get information as quickly as possible to these central authorities in these countries.”

Seng says about 10% of trading partners may be restricting pork imports. Hesays public health officials have been diligent in reassuring consumers about the safety of pork, and that appears to have limited the spread of unfounded food safety concerns in the US. Seng says health officials in many overseas markets have taken similar action, “A good example would beJapan where they did a press release announcing pork consumption is safe. They also set up hotlines throughout the country so people could call and ask questions and obviously that’s our number one market both in volume and value.”