The "swine flu" label has largely been replaced by the "H1N1 virus" when describing the current flu outbreak, but Iowa politicians at all levels of government still had to spend time this week emphasizing the safety of pork products in the wake of foreign import bans.

A top concern: bans by China and Russia, two of the world's top importers of pork.

A bipartisan congressional delegation including U.S. Senators Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley this week sent a letter to President Obama asking his help to combat unfounded concerns that are impeding the pork trade in domestic and export markets.

In the letter, they said initial references to the H1N1 virus as "swine flu" have created fears that pork can transmit this virus, dealing a blow to an already struggling U.S. pork industry.

"Unfortunately, several U.S. trading partners have already notified the United States government of new import restrictions on U.S. pork, and at least one country has extended their ban to meat from other species as well," the letter said. "There is no evidence to justify the imposition of measures to restrict the importation of pigs and pork products."

The letter asks Obama, along with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, to continue to place a high priority on maintaining access to pork and meat export markets around the world.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey said farmers were being impacted by the import bans. China has banned pork imports from dozens of U.S. states, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said this week. Officials said no reason was given for the bans, but the H1N1 virus is suspected to be the cause.

"Iowa pork, and all pork for that matter, is safe, and China and the other countries that are banning pork imports are not acting based on science," Northey said. "It is unfortunate that these unjustified actions are being felt most dramatically by the farmers who raise pork. The industry has already been facing very difficult economics for the last several months, and this just adds to the difficulties experienced by Iowa's pork producers."

Iowa Lab Takes on Role Testing Flu

Confirmation of probable cases of the H1N1 virus can now be done in Iowa at the University Hygienic Laboratory instead of being sent to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, state epidemiologist Patricia Quinlisk announced this week.

"We believe this will really help Iowa in quickly turning around these laboratory specimens," Quinlisk said during an hour-long live presentation on H1N1 over the Iowa Communications Network and the Web.

The change comes as the CDC is getting swamped with probable cases nationwide, and is taking several days to confirm them. A second United States death has occurred in Texas, and as of Friday morning there were more than 1,600 confirmed cases nationwide. No vaccine is available, although the CDC is hoping to make one available by this fall. Late this week the state said Iowa had 35 probable cases and five confirmed cases of the H1N1 flu.

The state has relaxed its guidelines on school closures due to the flu: Future school closures will now follow regular flu guidelines, only applying to schools in which more than 10 percent of students are out on a given day with flu symptoms. Quinlisk said preemptive school closures will delay but not stop the spread of disease. She said closures are a burden on working single parents, and do economic damage to communities.

"It is not something that is done lightly," Quinlisk said of school closures. "Now that we believe this virus is milder than what we first feared," the state can be cautious without being overly burdensome or creating too many barriers.

Meanwhile, the Iowa Electronic Health Market (IEhM) has opened several new markets to track and forecast trends in the current flu outbreak. The Iowa Electronic Markets draw attention during election season, as they're used as a tool to predict election results.

Initial offerings in the market serve to forecast information on how long the current outbreak will last in the United States, how many U.S. states will be affected, how many cases will be confirmed, what the mortality rate will be among confirmed cases, and how many other countries will be affected.

"To date, the IEhM has run markets to predict seasonal influenza activity at a state level and also the number of avian-influenza cases," said Forrest Nelson, an economics professor at the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business and the IEhM's director. "Both of these markets have provided accurate and timely infectious-disease forecasts."