Public-health experts are warning that a lack of surveillance may be allowing the 2009 pandemic H1N1 flu virus to go undetected in pigs. This raises the risk that the virus could circulate freely between humans and pigs, making it more likely to reassort into a deadlier strain, they say.rnPig surveillance is largely the remit of animal-health organizations, agriculture ministries and the farming industry. Their main concern tends to be that any reports of the pandemic virus in pigs might provoke overreactions such as the mass culling of pigs that took place in Egypt, or trade bans on pigs and pork. Within minutes of the World Health Organization (WHO) announcement on 11 June that swine flu had become a pandemic, Bernard Vallat, director-general of an intergovernmental trade body, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), had reiterated that trade sanctions were unjustified.
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