Less pork and more hygiene is the order of the day at Middle East hotel F&B outlets as swine flu spreads.
At the Crown Plaza Dubai, F&B director Alfred Moussa said he would “provide more of a variety of non-pork items” as a precaution against the epidemic.
However, Mövenpick Hotel Bur Dubai executive chef Marcus Gregs asserted “you can’t get cold flu from eating pork. It was the same with the avian flu; it’s people handling the pork that are at danger”.
Instead of taking pork off the menu, Gregs has stepped up the hygiene procedures in the kitchen. “Cleaning telephone handsets, toilet-door handles, buttons on lifts and other high-usage areas are the precautions hotels should be taking because the flu is passed on through touch,” he added.
Greg's sentiments were reiterated by US Meat Export Federation (USMEF) regional director for Europe, Russia and the Middle East John Brook, who supplies meat to some of the pork-serving hotels in the Middle East.
“This is not a food issue; it’s an influenza outbreak among human beings. So far I haven't seen a reaction from Middle East hotels, but in the past I've found that they're sensible and tend to follow the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Animal Health Organisation's (OIE) guidelines,” said Brook.
The WHO has outlined that “swine influenza has not been shown to be transmissible to people through eating properly-handled and prepared pork (pig meat) or other products derived from pigs.”
“In the next dew days I expect to see the world finally correct itself and the countries which have stopped the import of Mexican or US pork products will remove the ban and start looking at the real problem of managing flu among humans,” said Brook.
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