Cozumel, Mexico. July 26, 2008.

HONG KONG — What to call the new strain of flu raising alarms around the world has taken on political, economic and diplomatic overtones.

Pork producers question whether the term “swine flu” is appropriate, given that the new virus has not yet been isolated in samples taken from pigs in Mexico or elsewhere. While the new virus seems to be most heavily composed of genetic sequences from swine influenza virus material, it also has human and avian influenza genetic sequences as well, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Government officials in Thailand, one of the world’s largest meat exporters, have started referring to the disease as “Mexican flu.” An Israeli deputy health minister — an ultra-Orthodox Jew — said his country would do the same, to keep Jews from having to say the word “swine.” However, his call seemed to have been largely ignored.

Janet Napolitano, the secretary for homeland security, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack went out of their way at a press conference in Washington on Tuesday to refer to the virus by its scientific name, as the “H1N1 virus.”

Excerpted from ‘The Naming of Swine Flu, a Curious Matter,’ by Keith Bradsher. The New York Times, April 28, 2009.