Swine flu A with the potential to trigger new pandemics in humans has been found in European pig production, including in Danish pigs.
It writes Dagbladet Information.
The variants of the swine flu have been found in a German study conducted by researchers led by the Department of Diagnostic Virology at the Friedrich-Loeffler Institute.
The German study includes more than 18,000 samples of sick animals from almost 2,500 pig herds in Europe. 2463 of the samples are from sick Danish pigs.
– There is a risk that the different strains can form a new virus with pandemic potential – ie the ability to infect humans easily, says Hans Jørn Kolmos, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Southern Denmark.
– The risk is of an order of magnitude where, from a purely probability point of view, it can be said that it will happen at some point, he says.
Among the virus strains identified by German researchers is a group found in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. It was first seen in Denmark, but has since spread to Germany and the Netherlands, where a very distinctive cluster has formed.
Birgitte Iversen Damm, veterinarian and chief consultant for agricultural animals and mink at Dyrenes Beskyttelse, is concerned.
– The study testifies to the danger we expose ourselves to by having so many animals gathered in very little space. It provides the perfect breeding ground for dangerous viruses to develop and multiply.
– It is a huge biological experiment just to be able to mass produce cheap meat, says Birgitte Iversen Damm.
Lars Erik Larsen, who is a professor of veterinary virology at the University of Copenhagen and has worked with viral infections in production animals for the past 20 years, says that there are similar studies in Denmark.
– These influenza viruses in pigs pose a risk. Swine flu is a constant threat. Most had also predicted that the next pandemic would be the flu. But then it became corona instead, says Lars Erik Larsen.
Lars Erik Larsen has just in January this year started a project to study the risks of pandemic influenza from pigs.
The project will find markers in influenza viruses that will quickly make it possible to make a professionally based risk assessment of whether the new variants of viruses have the potential to jump to humans.
The Ministry of the Environment and Food did not want to comment on the German study.
Source: The Nordic Page