Denmark - MRSA st398 (cc398) - Journalist arrests - Ombudsman intervenes

It's a long, sad and complicated story, with journalists being arrested and convicted, after a long delay, for releasing information on which Danish pig farms were known to have MRSA st398 in their pigs.

An additional four year delay did not help anyone, with human deaths directly attributed to MRSA on Danish pig farms, and some spread abroad, especially to other Scandinavian countries, where some information has been released.

The situation is not good for public health, anywhere.

You can find many articles on the British newsgroup uk.business.agriculture and on the blog below, dealing directly with the scandal, and the implications for similar cover-ups and scandals in Britain.

Finally, the Danish ombudsman has intervened, and ordered the information to be released.

The journalists, Kjeld Hansen and Nils Mulvad are to be congratulated.

"Aabenhedstinget and Investigative Reporting Denmark continue to work to get the list of infected farms for publishing it. Aabenhedstinget is a network for openness under the Danish School of Media and Journalism."

Much of the story can be read, in translation, on this site:
http://www.ir-d.dk/danish-ombudsman-names-of-infected-pigfarms-must-be-public/

and a search on the blog http://animal-epidemics.blogspot.co.uk/ will produce much more information on MRSA in Danish pigs, from other sources, dating back as far as 2008