Chlamydia jag has pig future

Published Date: 23 October 2008

THE growing problem of chlamydia in Chinese pigs has prompted an Edinburgh firm to devise a vaccination which could eventually be used on humans.

BigDNA has teamed up with the China Agricultural University in Beijing to produce jags, which will initially be used on pig farms and on other animals, but it is hoped it can eventually be used to inoculate humans. 

Dr Jason Clark, principal researcher at the Roslin-based firm, said: 

"Chlamydia is a major problem on pig farms in China." 

Menacing pigs disappear from Hillsborough

By Jessica Bernstein-Wax

Bay Area News Group

Article Launched: 10/12/2008 09:45:00 PM PDT

A pair of feral pigs who prowled the streets of Hillsborough after dark, wreaking havoc on manicured lawns and artfully landscaped back yards, apparently have vanished.

And they're not missed.

Residents and police say they have seen neither snout nor tail of the duo since Oct. 4.

"We're just hoping that they're gone and that's the end of it," said John Meyer, who became so aggravated by the animals' almost nightly romps in his yard that he hired Milpitas-based trapper Steve Hebert to take care of the problem.

Since late spring, the Hillsborough Police Department has received numerous complaints of feral pigs from residents of a neighborhood near Cherry Creek, Capt. Mark O'Connor said.

One person reported that a pig approached a family member aggressively and wouldn't retreat, O'Connor said. And the beasts have been so busy rooting and kicking up dirt on the surrounding hillsides that many fear the season's first rain will wash piles of debris into the creek.

"Pigs can be dangerous," O'Connor said. "Our real concern is for the safety of a child or an elderly adult walking down into this area and being injured as the result of a pig."

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Enjoy a refreshing ham soda

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- Coming soon next to the Coke and Pepsi in a store near you: ham-and latke-flavored soda to make your holiday feast complete.

Jones Soda's Christmas Pack flavors are Sugar Plum, Egg Nog, Christmas Tree and Christmas Ham.

It even will be kosher, the company making it says -- including the ham.

Jones Soda Co., the Seattle-based purveyor of offbeat fizzy water, is selling holiday-themed limited-edition packs of flavored sodas.

The Christmas pack will feature such flavors as Sugar Plum, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog and Christmas Ham. The Hanukkah pack will have Jelly Doughnut, Apple Sauce, Chocolate Coins and Latkes sodas.

"As always, both packs are kosher and contain zero caffeine," Jones said in a statement.

The packs will go on sale Sunday, with a portion of the proceeds to be given to charity, the company said.

Jones' products feature original label art and frequently odd flavors. Last year's seasonal pack was Thanksgiving-themed, with Green Pea, Sweet Potato, Dinner Roll, Turkey and Gravy, and Antacid sodas.

For its contract to supply soda to Qwest Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks, Jones came up with Perspiration, Dirt, Sports Cream and Natural Field Turf. The company -- fortunately or unfortunately -- prides itself on the accuracy of the taste.

Jones also makes more traditional flavors, including root beer, cherry and strawberry sodas.

Ham report stirs 'mess'

Ham report stirs 'mess'

By Judith Meyer , Managing Editor/days
Wednesday, April 25, 2007

LEWISTON - An obscure online parody of the recent hate incident at the Lewiston Middle School - a parody reported as news on a national Fox broadcast Tuesday - launched an immediate avalanche of angry phone calls and ugly e-mails to the school system.

In the parody, the ham steak became a ham sandwich. Fake quotes were attributed to Superintendent Leon Levesque, Stephen Wessler of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, and one of the Somali students targeted in the incident.

The post then appeared to legitimize the information by attributing The Associated Press as its source.

Larry Laughlin, chief of bureau for AP in Northern New England, said the parody was "clearly improper use of The Associated Press brand."

"You can't," Laughlin said, "fancifully make up comments and add them to an Associated Press story."

Lawyers for the AP are reviewing the parody post and will take action as appropriate, Laughlin said.

The parody, posted by Nicholas Plagman of Atlanta, Ga., and published Monday on an Associated Press look-alike site called Associated Content, and the resulting comments and posts on that and dozens of other online sites, created tension at the middle school and among parents of students.

"We're in a mess here," Levesque said, that they want to straighten out by talking about the cafeteria incident with students. Students are upset and don't want to talk, he said, because they're worried about harassment.

Following the Fox broadcast, Levesque's office received dozens of angry phone calls and profanity-laced e-mails, made and sent by people all over the country, who charge the school district overreacted to what they believed from news reports to be a ham sandwich tossed at a Somali student.

"Leaving your sandwich on a table is now a crime in Maine?" one e-mail asked. It continued, "This child did nothing illegal in placing his sandwich in front of several intolerant people that will kill YOUR students for sitting at the same table let alone placing a sandwich next to them."

From North Carolina, a e-mailer wrote that he'd read the "news media of your actions with regards to a child leaving a ham sandwich on a table used by Muslim students at one of your schools. Excuse my bluntness, but are you people insane?"

And, in another e-mail, "A ham sandwich is not a hate crime. It's two pieces of bread with a processed meat between them. Stop catering to the less than 1% and offending the other 99%. Please!"

Another e-mail suggested Levesque wasn't qualified to be superintendent of a public school because he "obviously escalated a simple prank into a hate crime."

That's not the case, Levesque said.

The incident, which happened in the school cafeteria on April 11, was considered by school staff to be a hate incident. School resource officer Bill Brochu, according to Principal Maureen Lachapelle, followed police procedure by filing a report "because the ham incident was perceived as a hate/bias crime" by the students.

"The Somali boys said they were offended by it because of their religion," which considers pork unclean, and Brochu "did an investigation and forwarded his report to his supervisor, Adam Higgins," Lachappelle said. From there, the report was sent to the Attorney General's Office for review and to the Androscoggin County District Attorney's Office for review for possible harassment charges.

According to Lachapelle, a student brought a honey-baked ham to school to share with his friends. While they were in the cafeteria, one or more students dared another student (not the one who brought the ham to school) to put the ham on a table in front of five Somali boys. That student took up the dare, and followed through even though his friends immediately tried to talk him out of it. The student "knew it was wrong," Levesque said, while he was doing it.

Lachappelle said the student regrets the incident and his parents have supported the punishment meted by the school district.

The Sun Journal published a story about the incident on April 19 as the lead article on the front page. After Monday's Associated Content posting, the altered story moved rapidly across personal and news sites and was discussed with outrage.

In the parody, Levesque was quoted as saying "These children have got to learn that ham is not a toy, and that there are consequences for being nonchalant about where you put your sandwich."

Wessler was quoted as saying his agency was working with the school to create an "anti-ham 'response plan.'"

Neither man said those things.

Levesque never made any reference to a need to make students feel safe from attacks from any ham product.

The parody also attributed a quote to the student who was targeted with the ham, equating the experience to being "back in Somalia being shot at all over again."

Plagman never spoke to the student, and the student never made that statement.

The Sun Journal attempted to contact Plagman for comment, but he did not respond.

Wessler, who talked to a Texas CBS affiliate and two Fox affiliates Tuesday and has been scheduled to appear on another Fox broadcast today, said, "This kind of distortion by reputable news outlets is destructive."

"Fox has figured out, from the calls we've gotten, that they've made a big mistake," Wessler said.

"This is a wake-up call that the level of hate and anger, among a small population, is vibrant," he added.

Levesque said he was bothered not only that the parody took aim at a sensitive issue in Lewiston, but also that Fox and others reported the information as fact without checking. The national media, Levesque said, sees information posted online and "uses it as gospel."

In this case, reporting false information is getting in the way of the city and the school's continued work to build community understanding and tolerance for immigrants, said Phil Nadeau, Lewiston's assistant city administrator. The parodied news account cast a false impression of an overwhelmingly tolerant city and its population, Nadeau said, and of the Somali population in particular.

"The last thing they want is to be above the fold" of a front page or featured on the evening news, Nadeau said.

Watching the parody and news reports unfold Tuesday, Levesque said is proof media "is interested in entertaining and playing on people's emotions," which gets in the way of building community relations.

Lachapelle said she won't let it get in the way of the disciplined student's return to school, ensuring steps are being made to make sure he feels safe when he comes back.

HATE CRIME OR JUST A HAM SANDWICH

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Firefighters plan ham dinner

CANNON BEACH - The Cannon Beach Volunteer Firefighters will hold their 61st annual benefit ham dinner from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday at the Cannon Beach Conference Center, located at Third and Spruce streets. All are welcome. The cost is $10 for adults and $5 for children younger than 12 years old. Tickets will be available at the door and at the fire station. The proceeds from the event will be used to purchase firefighting, medical and rescue equipment.

Pig Voucher Scheme Milestone

THE vaccine voucher scheme being run by the British Pig Executive has now hit the million mark in less than six months.

Since its launch in April, enough vouchers have been redeemed to treat the equivalent of 1.25 million pigs and BPEX has invested some pounds 650,000 in the programme.

Mark Wilson, director of pig industry development, said: "We are beginning to look at the performance data from 1,100 completed voucher claim forms.

"We shall undertake a veterinary survey to assess the nationwide early indications of performance post- PCV2 vaccination for November.

"Then we shall analyse in depth a significant number of units with the best quality of information; this element will take us into the new year.

"At the end of the project each participating producer will receive a spreadsheet of their individual results showing the apparent value of the vaccine to their business."

(c) 2008 The Journal - Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

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Farmer cancels pig-wrestling contests

Amid fears of fines, violence, he stops remaining schedule

By Joe Burris

October 7, 2008

Spring Meadow Farms owner Stan Dabkowski has yet to hear if his event violates county code. (Baltimore Sun photo by Monica Lopossay / September 27, 2008)

Stan Dabkowski still doesn't know whether his pig mud-wrestling contest last month violated Baltimore County animal-control laws.

But after receiving complaints from animal-rights groups, word of a possible boycott of his business and a threat of violence, the Spring Meadow Farms owner has decided to cancel the remainder of the schedule.

"The week [before the event] we had about six to eight negative comments," the farmer said yesterday. "Afterward we had about 30 to 40, and one guy threatened to do violence to me, my family and my business."

The event in Upperco drew complaints from animal-rights groups People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Humane League of Baltimore, and raised questions about whether it violated a county code that prohibits instigating combat between animals and humans.

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• Today's Sun photos Photos

Dabkowski said he got the idea from a friend and fellow farmer in Pennsylvania who has generated local interest and revenue from pig mud-wrestling. Dabkowski invested $3,000 in 24 pigs and construction of a 30-foot-diameter ring.

About 200 people turned out for the Sept. 27 event, where several four-member teams took turns trying to catch pigs and place them in a round water trough in less than 90 seconds to compete for a $150 prize.

Dabkowski, who had planned to stage about three more contests, said he was concerned that the county might fine him up to $2,000 - $100 for each of the 20 pigs used in the first event. County officials attended and filmed the first event, and Dabkowski said they told him they would study the film to decide whether citations were warranted.

He canceled an event slated for last Saturday for fear of additional fines. County Health Department spokeswoman Monique Lyle said yesterday that officials had not yet determined whether the event violated code.

Another factor, Dabkowski says, was word that opponents were advocating a boycott of Spring Meadow Farms. Dabkowski's operation includes a produce market, garden center, ice cream shop and a farm zoo.

In a news release, the Humane League took credit for "shutting down" the competition. Aaron Ross, a spokesman for the group, said he attended the September event and sent an e-mail to members urging a boycott of the farm's products. Dabkowski said many members called or e-mailed to voice their objections, and that he was concerned about losing business.

And then there was a threat of violence that came in an e-mail.

"After the threats, my wife started having chest pains," Dabkowksi added. "The [county] taped the event but they still haven't told us whether we've done anything wrong. My wife and I prayed about it, and we've decided to lay it to rest. We're not in position to do battle with the county and take on thousands of dollars worth of fines."

Dabkowski said he had heard rumors of protests at future events. For him, the slew of inflammatory calls and e-mails was enough.

"It started getting ugly. One person said that I belonged in the same jail cell as Michael Vick," he said, referring to the former NFL star imprisoned for sponsoring a dogfighting ring where animals were tortured and killed.

The pig-wrestling competition is history, but Dabkowski said he is planning a pig roast Oct. 18 that's open to the public.

"That's what pigs are for," he said.

Baltimore Sun reporter Jonathan Pitts contributed to this article.

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What a tainted ham can do

McDowell County rescuers recall poisoned picnic of 1958

by Hanna Rachel Raskin in Vol. 15 / Iss. 06 on 09/03/2008

A bad ham made it safer to drive in McDowell County.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the McDowell County Rescue Squad, an organization formed after stunned area residents watched ambulances from neighboring Burke County charge through their streets in response to a Mayday plea from Eugene Cross Elementary School. At 3 p.m. on June 3, 1958, the schools’ students—seized by disabling stomach cramps and retching fits—began collapsing in their straight-backed wooden chairs.

“One little boy got sick,” Mrs. Garland Williams, Eugene Cross’ principal, told the Asheville Citizen the next day, recounting the onset of the epidemic. “Did he throw up at his desk? He surely did.”

Absent a municipal fleet of rescue vehicles, the town of Marion was then entirely dependent on local mortuaries for ambulance services. Funeral homes routinely lent their hearses for patient transport—a pragmatic solution that wrote its own punch line—but there weren’t enough long black cars from Old Fort to Asheville to rush more than 200 sickly children to the hospital.

The crisis quickly hit the airwaves, with deejays calling upon listeners to leave their offices and head to the school. Doctors, lawyers and bankers dutifully converged upon the scene, loading their sedans with as many stricken students as they could carry. The school-auditorium stage was reconfigured as an impromptu triage unit, with glucose bottles strung from floor lamps and students awaiting transport swaddled in blankets.

Dean Wall was standing on South Main Street when the ambulances from Burke County arrived: “I heard those sirens coming,” he remembers. “Because of their quick action, children were saved.”

The squad’s heroics so impressed the town that a group of local Moose Lodge members, including Wall, resolved to form a rescue unit of their own. By the end of the year, 15 men had completed their first-aid training and purchased an aging Navy ambulance, ready for dispatch to car crashes on the recently completed stretch of Interstate 40 that pawed through McDowell County, industrial accidents and medical emergencies.

But that proud achievement was still six months after that scary afternoon in June, when young children lay writhing on the footpaths leading away from Eugene Cross, felled before reaching home. Indeed, so many children required hospitalization that Marion General couldn’t accommodate them all: Patients were roused from their beds to make room for the newly sick.

“If all these boys and girls live, I’m going to pass them all,” Williams vowed.

The students survived. Two days after the incident, only one victim remained in the hospital—the cafeteria supervisor’s husband, D.S. Ayers, a retired mill worker who headed the school’s maintenance department. Ayers, 65, carried sick children to the school’s front door until he fainted from exhaustion. “He just stayed on his job too long,” Williams explained to a Citizen reporter.

As the children’s terrified parents knew, McDowell County got lucky. Food poisoning reached pandemic proportions in the years before processing was well-regulated, refrigeration was reliable and every amateur cook could quote the golden rules of food safety. Newspapers ran breathless accounts of food-borne fatalities on an almost weekly basis, alerting their readers to the hidden dangers of Boston cream pies and egg salad.

What made these reports especially riveting was food poisoning’s propensity to infiltrate the happiest of gatherings. The elements of celebration—warm weather, large groups of people and rich, indulgent foods—formed a tragic troika of ptomaine incubation. Perhaps the dastardliest culprit in mid-century food-poisoning transmission was the custard-filled wedding cake, which took down so many bridal parties that in 1947, Jersey City’s chief health officer was compelled to issue an official warning against displaying wedding cakes in unventilated reception halls.

Skimming these food poisoning stories, it’s hard not to be struck by the apparent frivolity of the American diet. Prison inmates and mental-asylum residents seem to be forever feasting on cream puffs and Italian ices. An éclair scare that swept through lower Manhattan in 1924 began when two Gimbels’ clerks lunched on clam chowder, watermelon and chocolate éclairs, all washed down with tall glasses of milk. Unlike the recent spate of tainted-food cases, which have centered on vegetables chockablock with nutritional value, the deadliest dishes of the 20th century came to the table ready to party.

Few fun foods didn’t wreak violent havoc on stomachs somewhere. In 1934, after eating ice cream, more than 150 Rotarians became critically ill (including the dessert’s manufacturer, who confidently ate a scoop of the frozen treat himself to prove it wasn’t contaminated). Hollandaise sauce, which figured in many New Yorkers’ favorite fancy foods, became such a headache for the city’s health department in 1950 that 20 restaurants were forbidden to prepare it. Pies, cakes and molded salads all turned toxic with frightening frequency.

But no festive food was as reliably troublesome as ham. The most devastating cases of food poisoning—700 teenage girls stricken at the Sunshine Society’s 1958 state convention, 650 lab workers sickened at a company picnic the next year—almost always involved a spoiled ham.

Country ham was the centerpiece of the end-of-the-year luncheon the Eugene Cross students enjoyed before falling ill. “It was sort of a picnic for the school—in the lunchroom, but sort of a party,” Williams said at the time. The menu also included canned green beans, preserves, baked apples and coleslaw, which the State Laboratory’s assistant director first fingered as the transmitter.

“In cases of this sort, we usually suspect the food which requires the most human handling,” Lynn Maddry told the Citizen.

Gerald Little, a sixth-grader, was one of the few students who felt fine hours after the celebratory meal. “I didn’t eat the beans,” he offered.

But McDowell County health officer W.F.E. Loftin immediately focused his investigation on the three baked hams, purchased from a store down the road in Rutherfordton. “In view of the fact that everyone partook of the ham, and since this is the usual offender, this is the agent suspected by local people,” he confidently announced.

Within a week, lab results confirmed Loftin’s suspicions, finding the dreaded staph bacteria in ham samples submitted by the school.

The legacy of the mass poisoning is the McDowell County Rescue Squad, which has steadily professionalized and grown since its members answered calls in a six-cylinder station wagon Wall called “the sick six.” He still remembers the vehicle’s inaugural run in hilly McDowell County: “We had the siren going, we had the red light going, and a boy passed us on a bicycle,” he laughs.

The squad’s inventory now includes a state-of-the-art crash truck, a rescue boat equipped with sonar and underwater cameras, two ambulances, a collection of four-wheelers and a brand new seven-bay garage in which to house all the machinery. “We’ve only had two patients die once we got ‘em in our hands,” says Wall.

Indeed, the squad’s reliability may have inured area residents to the threats posed by just plain living—exactly what Dr. Loftin feared in 1958. “If the world lasts 10 million years, we will certainly have another attack,” Loftin told the Citizen. “Everybody will be careful now for five or six years and then they’ll forget again.”

The McDowell County Search and Rescue Squad will celebrate its 50th anniversary on Sunday, Sept. 14, with a ribbon cutting at its new facility (at 186 State St. in Marion). Call 442-8415 for more information. 

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Monster pig traps woman

Sep 23, 2008

SYDNEY - A PIG the size of a Shetland pony has trapped an Australian woman in her village home, the national broadcaster reported on Tuesday. Ms Caroline Hayes, 63, has tried leave her house in Uki in northern New South Wales to use the outdoor toilet but says the animal has bitten her and shoved her back inside. 'It's a beautiful male pig but he's just so big and so pushy,' she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Rangers from the local Murwillumbah Council tried to rescue her but could not capture the huge animal. 'The rangers came out to my house yesterday with a dog cage and this pig is that big, it's like trying to put an elephant in a dog cage,' she said. 'They tried for a little while and they couldn't do it. They got him halfway in and he just backed off and went back to my dam, where he was having a lovely time in the water.' Ms Hayes said she and her neighbours began feeding the pig, whom they named Bruce, when it showed up at their homes 10 days ago after its owners could not handle it and let it loose in the rainforest. But it became aggressive, demanding more food and biting her on the leg when she tried to go to the toilet. 'It started getting very pushy, started pushing me around, so I started to get a bit frightened, until the stage that it started knocking on my door at four o'clock in the morning, actually head-butting my door,' she said. 'This morning, I wanted to go to my toilet, which is outside. I opened up the door and the pig pushed me that hard, it pushed me back into my room, where I fell over,' she said. 'I picked up a broom and poked him out with it and he snapped it in half with his mouth.' The rangers were due to try to capture the pig again on Tuesday, ABC said. -- AFP Source

October Is National Pork Month

A healthy alternative, Pork is already a fall staple for tailgating and holidays -- and packed full of protein, it's great for low-carb diets.

HATFIELD, Pa., Sep 15, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Pork may bill itself as the "other white meat," but it's actually the most widely eaten meat in the world -- almost twice as much as chicken, according to the USDA. It's ingrained in American culture -- not only is ham the No. 1 lunch meat eaten at home in the U.S., but even icons like Uncle Sam and Wall Street trace their origins to the industry.

October is National Pork Month, which recognizes that centuries old industry full of delicious tradition. And helping feed that need is family-owned Hatfield Quality Meats. For fall, the company recently introduced the new Autumn Spice Ham Steak and Virginia Brand Ham, in addition to new pre-marinated entrees such as Sweet Brown Sugar Ham Steaks and Lemon Garlic Pork Loin Filets.

"Pork tenderloin is so flavorful and versatile, it can help take the boredom out of low-fat diets -- and it has a lot of the nutrients you need in your daily diet," said Eric Haman, a spokesman for Hatfield.

A recent USDA study reveals six common cuts of fresh pork are leaner today than they were 15 years ago -- on average about 16 percent lower in total fat and 27 percent lower in saturated fat. But less fat doesn't have to mean less flavor, according to Haman. To keep your lean pork moist and flavorful, try using an instant-read thermometer, or marinate your favorite cut before cooking -- many marinades add flavor without a lot of fat. And stuffing your chop with fruit or using a spice rub are other ways to boost the flavor.

Here are some additional facts:

-- A recent study published in the journal "Obesity" revealed that including protein from lean sources of pork in your diet -- like Hatfield's new marinated pork loin filet -- could help retain more lean body mass (including muscle) while losing weight. In fact, tenderloin is the leanest cut of pork with only 2.98 grams of fat per 3-ounce serving, making it as lean as a skinless chicken breast.

-- While low in fat, pork also contains important nutrients such as Thiamin, B-vitamins, phosphorus and zinc.

-- Lean pork, such as chops and ham, is recognized as a nutritious choice in the Meat & Beans Group on the USDA's MyPyramid.

-- Many pork cuts are great source of high-quality protein. Protein provides a feeling of fullness at meals, which can help make you feel satisfied without overindulging at the dinner table. (When shopping, make sure to look for lean sources of pork with the word "loin" in the name, such as pork tenderloin or loin chop.)

-- Pork's perfect for low-carb diets. To keep fat and saturated fat intake down, experts recommend choosing lean sources of protein, such as lean pork.

ROAST PORK LOIN WITH APPLES AND
CINNAMON
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 60 minutes
1 1/2 lbs. Hatfield Simply TenderTM Pork
Roast, any variety
2 apples, cored, peeled, and sliced into wedges
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon black pepper, ground
1 teaspoon ginger, ground
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, ground
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground
1/2 cup dry white table wine
1/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice

DIRECTIONS
        1.      Rub pork loin with olive oil, pepper, HALF of the ginger, nutmeg,
                and cinnamon.
        2.      Combine the other half of those spices with the wine, lemon juice
                and honey; stir in the apple wedges.
        3.      Preheat oven to 350°F.
        4.      Place pork in shallow baking pan.
        5.      Roast to an internal temperature of 160°F.,
                about 40 minutes.
        6.      Remove from oven, cover and keep warm; let rest for 10-15 minutes.
                Reserve all juices.
        7.      Heat apple mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer.
        8.      Cover and simmer until apples are tender, about 5 minutes.
        9.      Add any pork juices, simmer a few minutes more.
        10.     Remove from heat. Slice pork loin; arrange on plates, pour warm
                sauce over slices, garnish with apples.
Servings: 6

For more tips, recipes and special offers, visit HatfieldQualityMeats.com.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Hi-res images are available for publication at http://share.redtettemer.com/HQM_PR

SOURCE: Hatfield

Hatfield
Eric Haman, 215-368-2500 ext. 8840
ehaman@hqm.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008


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