Quite aside from antibiotic resistant disease, like MRSA st398, the writer has also been campaigning for an investigation into Hepatitis E in British pigs, the carriage by and risks to veterinarians and farmers for some years. Here are links to just some of the more recent posts, with an idea of the contents.
22 Oct 2012
Hepatitis E in pigs - BBC reports.
Finally, after years of struggle, Hepatitis E in pigs in Britain and passing to
people has hit the broadcast news. The BBC World Service has carried a report
quoting Dr Harry Dalton in Cornwall.
30 Oct 2012
Hepatitis E - Mussels - Scotland. We
have long known that British oysters and other shellfish are heavily infected
with norovirus. Why they are still on sale baffles us. It has long been obvious
that pig effluent is the culprit in ...
23 Oct 2012
Hepatitis E in pigs - BBC reports. we
have managed to obtain a transcript from what appears to be an earlier
broadcast on the 2nd October 2012. This contains some alarming information for
Britain, the United States and ...
04 Oct 2012
This is a story we have been covering
for more than two years with increasing concern. We have been worried about
Hepatitis E in British pigs, pork and people, not least of illness in pig
farmers being investigated by the NHS.
14 Oct 2011
For years we have been campaigning
publicly for Britain's pigs to be tested for Hepatitis E and for the results to
be released to the public. We know that we have been losing pig farmers to
Hepatitis E. Britain's corrupt vetocracy ...
24 Sep 2011
Things get worse. Sausages and
sausage meat are a staple foods in Britain. This is a story we have been
covering for over a year. Even the Daily Telegraph reported here almost a year
ago under the headline: ...
03 Jan 2011
Pig farm showers carry MRSA ·
Britain's pigs have had Swine Flu H1N1 · MRSA in pigs - the biggest scandal of
the 21st cen... Swine Flu - Mutation? Hepatitis E infections soar - Macau &
Hong Kong. ▻ 2010 (53) ...
22 Oct 2010
Researchers are now beginning a
two-year study into the virus strain, thought to be transmitted through pigs.
In addition to the deaths, it is thought 55 people have been struck down by the
disease in Devon and Cornwall.
18 Oct 2010
Researchers from the Royal Cornwall
Hospital in Truro have received a grant of £337,000 to carry out a two-year
study with partners in Glasgow and Norwich into a rare form of Hepatitis -
Hepatitis E. The grant has come from ...
23 Oct 2010
Hepatitis E - three dead, 55 infected
- linked to . .... Hepatitis E is generally thought to be
caused by poor sanitary conditions and previously it had been assumed that
British sufferers had caught the disease abroad. But Dr ...
26 Aug 2010
Veterinarians worldwide are having a
difficult time, especially those handling pigs. Pigs are generally now very
diseased and the situation is getting worse by the day. We have known since
last year that many veterinarians ...
Now, almost unnoticed, just before Christmas, scientists have caught up with some of our moaning, groaning and whingeing, and published.
We will just confine ourselves to quotes related to pigs, pig farming, and cruise shipping.
As you can see once again, as with MRSA st398, science now fully supports our anguished pleas for urgent investigations by Defra, independently collected and audited, of course.
Full published letter with links here
Hepatitis
E Virus Genotype 3 in Shellfish, United Kingdom
Several recent reports have linked the incidence of human infection with hepatitis E virus (HEV) to consumption of undercooked pork, game products, and shellfish (1,2). Infectious HEV has been found in swine manure and wastewater (3); therefore, application of manure to land and subsequent runoff could contaminate coastal water, leading to contamination of shellfish and, subsequently, possible human infection...
...However, data have been restricted to questionnaires implicating consumption of shellfish as a source of transmission; no follow-up analyses of the contaminated foodstuff have been conducted. Thus, possible transmission routes for HEV remain poorly studied in the United Kingdom...
...The site at Ardrossan was
near a slaughterhouse and a meat preparation purification plant that processes
pigs. The plant was considered a potential source of contamination, and
mussels were collected in a 10-m2 area around an outfall (drain/sewage pipe) directly in line with
the processing plant...
...A total of 36 (92%) of the 39
mussels from the west coast were positive by PCR for HEV, and 5 (55%) of the 9
from the east coast were positive. The mean value of HEV RNA detected in the
samples was 4.25 log10 IU/mL
(range 3.73–5.2 log10 IU/mL),
and the assay was validated by using the current candidate HEV World Health
Organization standard ...
...Phylogenetic
analysis showed that most bivalve mollusk sequences clustered with HEV genotype
3 from humans and swine...
...Also, HEV sequences isolated specifically from a UK
human source corresponded with sequences isolated from the bivalve mollusks.
The presence of a swine-like HEV genotype 3 in freshwater bivalve mollusks has
also been reported in Japan and South Korea (1,9).
Worldwide, an estimated 40,000
persons die and another 40,000 experience long-term disability as a result of
consuming raw or undercooked shellfish ...
...This
study, demonstrating the presence of HEV in mussels collected locally in
Scotland for human consumption, raises concern as to whether these shellfish
are a potential source of infection, as reported (2). The
association between environmental contamination with HEV and possible
transmission by eating shellfish warrants investigation.
Claire Crossan, Paul J. Baker,
John Craft, Yasu Takeuchi, Harry R. Dalton, and Linda Scobie
Author
affiliations: Author affiliations: Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow,
Scotland, UK (C. Crossan, P.J. Baker, J. Craft, L. Scobie); University
College London, London, UK (Y. Takeuchi); European
Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School,
Truro, UK (H.R. Dalton)
