More Canadian Farms Kill Chickens to Stem Bird Flu

More chicken farms in southwestern British Columbia were ordered on Wednesday to kill their flocks, as Canadian agriculture officials try to stop the spread of bird flu.

More chicken farms in southwestern British Columbia were ordered on Wednesday to kill their flocks, as Canadian agriculture officials try to stop the spread of bird flu. The high-pathogenic H7 strain of avian influenza discovered last month near Abbotsford, British Columbia east of Vancouver is highly contagious among birds, but is not known to cause diseases in humans. Officials estimated the order covers 10 farms and 33 smaller home flocks with a total of 275,000 birds. All are within a three-mile radius of where the first case of the disease was discovered. Five farms with a total of 90,000 birds have already been ordered to kill their chickens after flu was detected in their flocks. Although the disease has not been detected at any of the farms covered by the new order, officials were worried about the potential of additional disease spread if the birds were allowed to remain. “You can make the analogy that it is like removing the fuel,” said Cornelius Kiley, a veterinarian with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Officials warned that since the virus may also have been spread by wild birds, they cannot rule out that it could reach farms outside of the five-kilometer “high risk” area covered by the order. Officials have already imposed bans on transporting chickens through and out of the area in the Fraser Valley, but British Columbia is not a major international exporter of poultry products.(Source: Reuters Health, March 2004)