Posted on 02/04/2007 1:50:44 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
HOLTON, England -- Britain scrambled to contain its first outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu in domestic poultry yesterday after the virus was found at a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey producer.
About 2,500 turkeys have died since Thursday at the Bernard Matthews farm near Lowestoft in eastern England. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said all 159,000 turkeys on the farm would be culled.
"We're in new territory," National Farmers' Union Poultry Board Chairman Charles Bourns said. "We've every confidence in DEFRA, but until we know how this disease arrived, this is a very apprehensive time for all poultry farmers."
The virus strain was identified as the highly pathogenic Asian strain, similar to a virus found in Hungary in January, DEFRA said.
It was the first time the deadly H5N1 strain was found on a British farm.
The outbreak mirrored a similar case in which hundreds of turkeys died at a farm in eastern France almost a year ago.
That outbreak was contained and there followed a lull in cases of H5N1 in European poultry until last month, when thousands of birds were culled after an outbreak among geese on a farm in Hungary.
Also yesterday, the World Heath Organization confirmed Nigeria's first human death from the strain. Nigerian health officials on Wednesday said several people had apparently contracted the virus, including a young woman who later died.
The strain tends to be transmitted to poultry by infected migrating wildfowl.
The disease has killed at least 164 persons worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia, and more than 200 million birds have died from it, or been killed to prevent its spread.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
BTTT!
Regards, Ivan
Well, at least action is being taken and they're not endlessly sitting around and debating the idea as to whether or not action taken would hurt the bird's feelings.
It will be interesting to see how easily they can contain it. I suspect that, as was the case in France, it will be easily and totally contained. In the civilized world, due to the much greater containment and isolation of poultry stocks, we shouldn't have any problems containing the odd outbreak, and few if any cases of human infection.
Unfortunately, the human race reacts, not acts. Pearl Harbor, 911 and the coming Social Security meltdown come to mind.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.