Consuming pork and pork products are still safe despite confirmed swine infections of the A/H1N1 flu virus in Canada, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert said on Sunday.

"We want to reemphasize it's not a food-borne disease, and you don't get the disease through eating pork," WHO food safety scientist Peter Ben Embarek told a news conference in Geneva.

"There is no reason to be afraid of consuming pork or pork product as long as pork is cooked in the way we normally cook meat," Embarek said.

The Canadian health authorities said on Saturday that a swine herd in the western province of Alberta had been found infected by the virus, probably from a farm worker who had travelled to Mexico, the epicentre of the current widespread A/H1N1 flu outbreak which could evolve into a full global pandemic.

According to Embarek, the pigs and the farm worker in Alberta are all recovering from only mild symptoms, and there is no indication of other farms being affected.

"It's not a big surprise. From an animal health point of view, this is a mild disease. Swine flu is very common in pigs," he said.

But he stressed the importance of actively monitoring the situation in pigs and other animals "to ensure that the disease if presenting in animals does not spread geographically."

"We need also to recommend and to take measures to prevent further human exposures to sick animals, because there is of course a risk for those ... in close contact with sick animals to get infected," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 4, 2009)