Avian Flu - What we need to know

Vietnam finds new outbreaks near Chinese border

Vietnam has detected bird flu on three farms near the Chinese border, the second such finding in the past few days, an animal health official said on Saturday.

Health workers slaughtered 157 chickens and ducks after farmers said 30 birds died on March 19 on three farms in Cao Bang province, said Dang Quang Binh, head of the provincial Animal Health Department.

"We sent samples for testing and on March 25 the results showed H5 was found in poultry samples from the three farms," Binh told Reuters by telephone from Cao Bang, 270 km (167 miles) north of Hanoi.

He was referring to the H5 subtype avian flu virus.

No further tests were likely be done to confirm if the strain was H5N1, which has killed 42 people in Vietnam since late 2003.

Source. This story comes days after infected birds were found smuggled from China.

Bird flu found in poultry smuggled from China to Vietnam

Health authorities in Vietnam have discovered bird flu in poultry illegaly imported from China and are conducting tests to find out if it is the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus, officials said Thursday.

"We made test last week on 30 samples of smuggled poultry in northern Lang Son province," said Le Van Tao, deputy director of the Animal Health Institute at the agriculture ministry.

"Results have shown one of the samples was positive to the H5 virus of avian flu," he said.

Experts still had to determine whether it was the deadly H5N1 virus that has claimed 42 lives in the communist nation since December 2003.

Tests were also under way done on another 40 samples in neigbouring Quang Ninh province, which also borders China.

No new bird flu cases have been identified in Vietnam since December and the last human death was reported in November.

Source.

Germany finds bird flu on poultry farm

The H5N1 bird flu virus has for the first time been detected on a poultry farm in Germany, the ministry for social affairs in the eastern state of Saxony said.

A spokeswoman for the ministry, Elke Reinking, said Wednesday that a special protection zone of three kilometres (1.9 miles) had been drawn around the poultry farm in Leipzig, where orders have been given to slaughter some 15,000 turkeys.

It was not yet clear whether the disease detected in dead turkeys on the farm on Tuesday was the highly pathogenic form of H5N1 which can prove fatal to humans, the ministry said.

From AFP via Yahoo!

Vietnam update

In an impressive burst of action, Vietnam, once the epicenter for bird flu, has temporarily stamped out the disease: no people infected since November, and no poultry outbreaks since December.

The poor communist nation says it accomplished this feat by vaccinating millions of chickens and ducks, slaughtering millions more, by being honest with international health officials, and by educating its citizens.

There were even crackdowns on local delicacies, like duck blood pudding, believed to be the source of at least one death.

[...] Vietnam spent $18.9 million vaccinating 120 million birds last year and plans to immunize 160 million more birds, said Hoang Van Nam, deputy director of the Department of Animal Health. Eighty percent of the poultry sampled after vaccination had enough immunity to protect against the disease and none was found to be carrying the virus.

China claims to have vaccinated all of its 14 billion domestic birds, but it has continued to see outbreaks and human infections. Last week, Shanghai logged its first human bird flu death, bringing the human toll in China to at least 11, according to WHO.

Widespread immunization requires thousands of workers who must keep the vaccine chilled and return to farms to give booster shots three or four weeks after the first inoculation. A third injection is given four months later to poultry raised up to a year. But many birds have much shorter life spans, meaning the cycle constantly starts over.

Read more at CNN.

Bird flu found in Cameroon, new outbreaks in a number of countries

About 240 dead birds were found in the coastal town of Limbe, near the Nigerian border and several hundred kilometers from the northern town of Maroua, where Cameroon's first outbreak was confirmed in a duck, the United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network reported yesterday. Agriculture Minister Aboubakary Sarki is visiting northern provinces to review control measures, the report said.

Twenty new outbreaks in poultry of the H5N1 avian influenza strain were reported to the World Organization for Animal Health in the week ending March 16, boosted by infections on farms in Nigeria and Romania. The disease in poultry raises the risk of human cases and creates opportunities for the virus to mutate into a pandemic form that may kill millions of people.

From Bloomberg. The article is a good summary of the latest outbreaks:

France reported a new H5N1 infection in a wild duck in the Ain region, near the border with Switzerland. France had its first outbreak of the disease in birds last month.

In Romania, several domestic hens in Magurele, 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the capital Bucharest, tested positive for the H5 subtype of bird flu after health authorities sampled poultry in the area. Authorities are testing to see whether the virus is the H5N1 type that can infect humans.

[...] Israel last week became the 29th country this year to report an initial H5N1 outbreak in either wild birds or fowl.

[...] In Nigeria, Africa's most-populous country, the virus spread to the southwestern state of Lagos, said Abdulsalami Nasidi, head of the Nigerian health task force charged with coordinating efforts to halt the spread of the virus. The affected farm was close to the Ogun state border and the virus hasn't been found near the city of Lagos, where about 11 million people live, since H5N1 was first reported in Nigeria six weeks ago, he said.

Finally,

A third Egyptian may have been infected with H5N1, Agence France-Press reported, citing Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali.

Pakistan confirmed bird flu in poultry today and Malaysia found new outbreaks in the North of the country.

Bird flu and "free range" poultry

Jaap Von Dalen is one of the farmers who must make up his mind in the next couple of weeks whether he wants to vaccinate.

The birds used to roam the fields freely, but now the government has ordered all birds to be kept inside unless they are vaccinated, fearing they may come into contact with infected wild birds and spread the virus.

Jaap lost all his birds to the 2003 outbreak of bird flu and would like to protect his new flock, but knows that vaccination carries other risks.

"I want to vaccinate because I know what bird flu can do - after the last outbreak I didn't even want to be a farmer anymore. I started again, built up a new flock and now I export my eggs to Germany," he said.

"But I'm worried the Germans won't want to buy produce from chickens which have been vaccinated, and if I can't sell my goods then I'll be broke."

[...]Jaap's business thrives at present partly because his products carry the "free range" stamp - but if he keeps the birds inside, he knows he will probably lose that valuable label.

[...] France has already seen the negative effect of vaccinating birds - several countries have refused to accept imports of French poultry meat after farmers in Landes were given permission to vaccinate geese and ducks.

Critics of vaccination warn that current bird flu vaccines do not offer complete protection from infection and could, in some circumstances, "hide" the virus in affected flocks.

From BBC. The biggest concern is clearly that vaccines are simply hiding the disease - read more here.

But there is some irony in the fact that even a truly effective vaccine would probably hurt the poultry industry in Europe. This goes back to the pro-"organic" media campaign in Europe. The debate was never one between health officials / researchers, an honest comparison of facts and findings. Instead, EU farmers and politicians dominated the public discourse trying very hard to ingrain into people's minds the fact that organic foods and free range poultry were simply better, and non-organic foods should be distrusted on principle. The debate was not primarily driven by public health concerns, that was simply marketing. The unholly aura around non-organic / GM foods was a great tool for protectionism, limiting competition from US and other markets and lending a hand to EU farmers (who also receive huge subsidies). It is ironic to see this pro-organic campaign come back to haunt some of the same farmers farmers, who must now deal with bird flu.

Not surprisingly, there are now calls from European farmers to have a government-enforced, EU-wide, mandatory vaccination campaign, all for "animal health" concerns of course:

Klaus Osinga from the LTO, the Dutch Farmers Association, speaks for many in the Netherlands.

"It doesn't make sense for some countries to vaccinate but for other EU countries like the UK not to. It's a political and an economic decision. Perhaps it's time to think more about animal health and about stopping the spread of bird flu," he said.

Bird flu's impact on the poultry industry

France's poultry sector, the biggest in Europe, is now losing 40 million euros ($48 million) a month as bird flu hits sales at home and abroad, French officials said on Friday.

The Paris government has said more than 40 countries have restricted imports of French poultry following the outbreak of H5N1 at a turkey farm in the east of the country.

Germany's poultry industry has lost more than 140 million euros since last autumn because of bird flu, with demand down some 20 percent from previous levels. Germany identified more than 140 cases of wild birds with H5N1, as well as a cat.

Hungarian poultry producers said on Friday their sales had fallen by up to 20 percent since H5N1 was first found there in dead swans on February 21. Chicken sales were hardest hit.

From Reuters, read the entire article - it also contains situation updates from around the world. Effect Measure points out insurance companies do not typically offer policies covering bird flu to the poultry industry. At the end of last year there were some reports of avian flu life insurance policies being offered to individuals in China.

France reacts to poultry outbreaks

French President Jacques Chirac urged consumers not to panic Saturday, hours after the government announced the European Union's first outbreak of deadly bird flu in commercial poultry.

Chirac said chickens and eggs remained safe to eat as he munched a piece of the famously succulent chicken from the Ain region, where the lethal virus was confirmed in turkeys.

Panic among consumers is "totally unjustified," Chirac said during a visit to open the annual Paris Agriculture Fair. "The virus in question ... is automatically destroyed by cooking. So there is absolutely no danger."

[...] Japan's decision Friday to suspend imports of French poultry and poultry products, including foie gras, signaled the potential impact even before the confirmation that the deadly H5N1 virus had decimated a farm of more than 11,000 turkeys at Versailleux in southeastern France.

Hong Kong also has temporarily suspended imports of French poultry, Brenda Chan, a spokeswoman of Hong Kong's Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, said Sunday.

In France itself, there has been a drop of up to 30 percent in poultry purchases in recent weeks. Chirac noted the "economic and social consequences" of panic and said the French must not fall into such a trap.

Source.

Suspected H5N1 on French farm

The ministry said a high mortality rate among turkeys was discovered at the farm, which has more than 11,000 birds and is situated in the department of l'Ain, where two cases of the disease have already been confirmed in wild ducks.

Test results are due on Friday, it added.

The farm has been cordoned off and all birds will be culled. The ministry said a security zone of three km (two miles) had been set up around the farm as is usual under the European Union emergency measures.

Source.

EU approves poultry vaccine plans

The European Commission gave conditional approval to French and Dutch plans to vaccinate millions of their poultry against bird flu, the first time it has endorsed such moves.

"The vaccination programmes are authorised only for specific birds in specified regions, and will be subject to rigorous surveillance and control requirements," the commission said in a statement.

"These include movement restrictions, strict monitoring of vaccinated flocks to ensure that there is no undetected outbreak of avian influenza, and careful record-keeping."

Source. British officials spoke out against the vaccine today:

"Crucially, though these vaccines protect against disease, they will not prevent birds from becoming infected and shedding virus," Deputy Chief Vet Fred Landeg said in a statement issued by the ministry.

"Because symptoms of disease would be masked, the hidden presence of disease would pose a serious problem," he added.

Today Austria announced the first H5N1 infection in poultry in the EU.