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Experts concerned avian flu found on farm outside high-risk zone in B.C.

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Officials are continuing tests to determine whether avian flu has been detected on a chicken farm outside a hot zone where hundreds of thousands of poultry will be slaughtered.

Officials are continuing tests to determine whether avian flu has been detected on a chicken farm outside a hot zone where hundreds of thousands of poultry will be slaughtered. Chickens on the Fraser Valley farm showed signs leading federal health officials to conclude avian flu might be present, federal officials said Monday. The signs include a common illness called Newcastle Disease, but also showed possible avian flu symptoms. “Analysis that CFIA has done indicated that it (the flock) may have also been infected with avian influenza,” said Dr. Cornelius Kiley, a spokesman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. “We don’t know that for sure.” The farm was placed under quarantine, the first outside a five-kilometre high-risk area near Abbotsford where the movement of poultry is strictly controlled to prevent the spread of the virus. It was in that area that birds on a farm first began dying last month. Five other farms in the area, including one newly confirmed Monday, also had poultry carrying avian flu. The H7 virus detected on the B.C. farms is not the same strain that has killed several people in Asia and is not believed to pose any serious risk to humans. Kiley wouldn’t speculate on the implications of avian flu being found outside the high-risk zone until seeing the results of tests determining whether the virus had indeed spread. “I think we’re going to wait until we find out what the result is and what the investigation means before we’re going to comment further on it,” he said. But one bird flu expert said that if the virus has spread there will have to be tighter restrictions placed on a wider area and more chickens slaughtered. “You really have to get this stopped,” said Earl Brown, who teaches at the University of Ottawa. “I can’t quote a number, but I think you’d want to jump more than another five kilometres,” he added. “I think you’d want to kill a lot of chickens.” Health officials announced last week all poultry within the high-risk zone – hundreds of thousands of birds – would be slaughtered as a pre-emptive move to kill the virus. If the sickness has spread beyond that area, it may have done so before officials were even aware of its presence on the original farm, said Brown. “It means that it’s slipping through the net or it’s getting through before the net’s thrown on them,” he said. Kiley would not say whether further precautions would be imposed if it’s confirmed avian flu made its way to a farm outside the high-risk area. He said the pre-emptive slaughter in the high-risk zone began over the weekend on a few operations and was expected to be done within 10 days. The newly suspected farm is located somewhere within a geographic area in southern British Columbia referred to by CFIA officials as the control area. The area includes the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley. Control area regulations, imposed earlier this month, restrict the movement of any bird in captivity, including pets, day-old chicks and hatching eggs. Farmers must now apply for a permit to move the birds and any bird product including eggs out of the area that stretches to the North Shore mountains, west to the ocean, south to the U.S. border and east to the town of Hope. Premier Gordon Campbell said earlier Monday it could be necessary for the provincial government to come up with some remedy to help the province’s poultry processors, who say they will be losing millions of dollars as a result of the shipping ban. A spokesman for one poultry processor said commercial freezers are also bursting with birds that can’t be shipped out of the hot zone, meaning healthy birds will also have to be killed. (Source: Canadian Press, March 2004)


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Dates

Posted On: 30 March, 2004
Modified On: 5 December, 2013


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