In reaction to the 2009 flu pandemic, governments around the world have responded with sometimes extreme reactions against pigs, which has included the official extermination of all domestic pigs in Egypt and the culling of three wild boars at the Baghdad Zoo in Iraq. Many of these slaughters occurred in Muslim countries, and religious restrictions on the consumption of pork have been cited as influencing the decision to take such action. Many other countries have banned international trade in pigs and pork products. The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that there is no reason to believe that pigs are transmitting the flu to humans. On May 2, the first incidence of transmission of the flu from humans to pigs, was discovered on a farm in Alberta, where infected pigs were discovered. It is suspected that an infected farmhand who recently returned from Mexico infected the animals. General responses Virus source According to researchers cited by The New York Times, "based on its genetic structure, the new virus is without question a type of swine influenza, derived originally from a strain that lived in pigs". This origin gave rise to the nomenclature "swine flu", largely used by mass media in the first days of the epidemic. Despite this origin, the current strain is a human-to-human transmitted virus, requiring no contact with swine. Food safety and import bans International health officials from the CDC, WHO, FAO, OIE and other food organizations have reaffirmed that pork is safe to eat and hogs are not to blame for the epidemic. However, as of early June, China, Russia and more than a dozen other countries were still banning pork imports from the U.S. The World Trade Organization (WTO) planned to highlight the pork bans in a forthcoming report on protectionism and reiterate that pork is not a source of infection and is safe to eat provided it is prepared properly. Some U.S. officials speculated that the bans may be more about "market share than health concerns," and were costing the hog industry millions of dollars every week. Dave Warner, a spokesman for the Washington-based National Pork Producers Council, pointed out that long-standing disagreements with China and Russia may be a factor. As a result, by mid-August, pork had become the second-worst commodity investment of 2009, and may fall 33 percent by yearend. U.S. exports plunged 20 percent in the first half of 2009 and