Is Associated Press finally listening to Marketing Sociologist?

Kudos to AP writers Mike Baker and Michael J. Crumb

DES MOINES, Iowa - "Like the virus itself, the name "swine flu" is spreading quickly. For the pork purveyors and hog farmers who make up the nation's $15 billion pork industry, that's a disaster.

"It doesn't seem to matter that the strain may not come entirely from pigs and cannot be spread by eating pork. Hog prices are already dropping as financial markets worry people will have second thoughts about buying "the other white meat."

"It's killing our markets," said Francis Gilmore, 72, who runs a 600-hog operation in Perry, outside Des Moines, and worries his small business could be ruined by the crisis. "Where they got the name, I just don't know."