The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday urged people to cook pork thoroughly to avoid potential hepatitis E infection, following foreign media reports of hepatitis E cases being caused by eating pork products from several European countries.
From 2014 to last year, Public Health England conducted a study probing the shopping habits of people with hepatitis E, and concluded that they had all consumed ham and sausages from an unnamed supermarket in the UK.
The UK government agency published a report last month saying that the virus strain had not been detected in British pigs — only in pork products imported from a few European countries.
The FDA yesterday urged people to cook pork products thoroughly to be on the safe side.
Studies have shown that the virus may spread from animals to humans through the consumption of undercooked or raw pork products, the FDA said, adding that the European Food Safety Authority has said that “consumption of raw or undercooked pork meat and liver is the most common cause of hepatitis E infection in the EU.”
FDA Division of Food Safety section chief Wu Tsung-hsi (吳宗熹) said that the hepatitis E virus can be killed by heating infected pork products.
Wu said that 97 percent of pork products consumed in the nation are domestic pigs, and only 3 percent are imported, mainly from the US and Canada, with very little from EU states.
Pork products should be heated at more than 70oC and cross-contamination can be avoided by using separate utensils and containers for handling raw and cooked meat, the FDA said.
People should maintain good hygiene by washing their hands thoroughly after using the toilet, before cooking and before meals, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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