As a particularly nasty strain of flu works its way around the world, some health officials say employers should pay for the cost of vaccinations.

The UN Food & Agricultural Organisation (FAO) said new rules have been set to cut levels of cancer-causing chemicals and bacteria in foodstuffs from French fries to baby foods.

A joint body of the FAO and World Health Organisation, the Codex Alimentarius Commission said that with food safety awareness growing around the world, the more than 30 new standards and guidelines it adopted last week will further protect consumers’ health reports Reuters.

While the World Health Organisation is keeping the flu pandemic alert at 5, the second highest level, future changes will reflect the flu’s severity as well as how widespread an outbreak is.

The move follows widespread criticism that the UN agency may have created undue panic about the virus, which has killed only 125 people around the world, 103 of them in Mexico.

Flu experts held hour-long talks and issued a statement saying "There was a broad consensus on the importance of including information on severity in future announcements."

Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova says the virus appears to have peaked between 23-28 April after killing at least 19 people, while the World Health Organization (WHO) says at least 787 people are infected worldwide.

Mexico announced yesterday its H1N1 flu epidemic is through the worst and the new H1N1 virus might be no more severe than normal flu.

Swine flu has now killed up to 149 people in Mexico, there are twice as many confirmed cases in the U.S. today as yesterday, and two more countries - Canada and Spain - have reported their first confirmed swine flu cases.

A phase 4 alert indicates a significantly increased risk of a pandemic, a global outbreak of a serious disease.

About one million people died in 1968 during the last such outbreak, the “Hong Kong” flu pandemic.