Geneva: The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced on Thursday it will would stop using the term "swine flu" to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs. The policy shift came a day after Egypt began slaughtering thousands of pigs in a misguided effort to prevent swine flu.
WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said the agriculture industry and the UN food agency had expressed concerns that the term "swine flu" was misleading consumers and needlessly causing countries to ban pork products and order the slaughter of pigs.
"Rather than calling this swine flu... we're going to stick with the technical scientific name H1N1 influenza A," Thompson said.
The swine flu virus originated in pigs, and has genes from human, bird and pig viruses. Scientists don't know exactly how it jumped to humans. In the current outbreak, WHO says the virus is being spread from human-to-human, not from contact with infected pigs.
Egypt began slaughtering its roughly 300,000 pigs on Wednesday even though experts said swine flu is not linked to pigs and not spread by eating pork. Angry farmers protested the government degree.
In Paris, the World Organisation for Animal Health said "there is no evidence of infection in pigs, nor of humans acquiring infection directly from pigs".
Killing pigs "will not help to guard against public or animal health risks" presented by the virus and "is inappropriate", the group said in a statement.
China, Russia, Ukraine and other nations have banned pork exports from Mexico and parts of the United States, blaming swine flu fears.
