We could call it FFKASF instead - Editorial Notebook

Stop calling it “swine flu,” media are urged. The latest group to urge was the Tri-National Agricultural Accord, with members from Canada, the United States and Mexico, who recently met in Manitoba.

They issued a statement that said, in part: “Use of colloquial terms by media has created inflammatory and misleading impressions in the minds of the general public and has negatively affected farmers and the agriculture industry across North America.”

“Swine flu” is the colloquial term referenced and the negative effects, of course, are the multi-country pork import bans and the drop in hog prices when consumers mistakenly associated eating pork with risk of flu.

Read Also

Producers face the reality of shifting grain price expectations

Significant price shifts have occurred in various grains as compared to what was expected at the beginning of the calendar year. Crop insurance prices can be used as a base for the changes.

Canadian hog producers, the federal minister of agriculture and the American Meat Institute have also urged media to use H1N1 instead of “swine flu.”

They’re preaching to the converted here at the Producer, where we’ve been using H1N1 to describe this pandemic flu strain since the World Health Organization indicated its accuracy – more or less.

It’s actually more accurate to call it (n)H1N1, the (n) indicating the word “novel,” which distinguishes it from a big category of influenzas also called H1N1. It is called Type A (H1N1) by some media as well.

By calling it H1N1, we’re taking a shortcut. We also assume our farmer readers expect and appreciate avoidance of the “s” word in relation to this influenza.

We did the same thing in 2003, when BSE came along. The Producer rejected use of “mad cow disease” in early days of that crisis, due to its inaccuracy and pejorative nature. BSE quickly became the norm here, as it is now in most other media.

Even then, the scientific sticklers suggested (r)BSE, because the (r), meaning “recombinant,” would have been more accurate in certain cases.

It’s a tricky business, figuring out what to call a nasty illness so that everyone immediately understands what is meant. That is likely the main reason some media have made the switch to H1N1 and some, notably CNN and Bloomberg news, persist in using “swine flu.” CBC and CTV use both terms, often within the same story.

There’s precedent for naming illnesses after their place of origin – Spanish flu, Hong Kong flu, avian flu. There’s precedent for naming illnesses that become acronyms: AIDS, Hepatitis B, TB.

For awhile, I tried out FFKASF – just around the newsroom – as a descriptor of this new illness: Flu Formerly Known As Swine Flu. It didn’t catch on.

If all media simply can’t be dissuaded from using the term “swine flu,” perhaps we should just think of it as an acronym: Some Wicked Influenza, Nasty Event.