Daily Bird Flu News Updates:
VNECONOMY - 5th December 2005
Vietnam expands cattle breeding as poultry substitute
VIETNAM - Vietnam's cattle breeding sector is sharply developing as avian influenza ravages the poultry industry, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).
The country's cattle herds have reached 4.9 million head, up 4.1 percent over the last year. The number of buffalo also increased to 2.8 million. The breeding of goats and sheep is seeing the highest jump, over 20 percent, with about 1 million head.
Bloomberg.com - 5th December 2005
Bird Flu in Indonesia Shows Battle to Avert Pandemic
ASIA - At 6 a.m. in a Jakarta market, a butcher wielding a 30-centimeter (12-inch) knife pulls another live chicken from one of 32 crates stacked along an alley wall.
One by one, he slits the birds' throats and tosses their still-quivering carcasses into a round plastic tub caked with dust and blood. The stench, enough to make the uninitiated gag, is heightened by the Indonesian humidity and the smell of ammonia and cigarettes pervading the Pasar Senen outdoor market.
UPI - 5th December 2005
New bird flu outbreak reported in Romania
BUCHAREST - Hunting is banned in part of eastern Romania after birds in three villages tested positive for the H5 subtype of bird flu. New cases were discovered on Saturday evening in the village of Ciocile, Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur said.
The Braila County village was quarantined and thousands of birds were being killed, the Bucharest Daily News reported.
The Sydney Morning Herald - 5th December 2005
Legacy of farming methods comes home to roost
US - With the spread of avian influenza, the cost of factory farming has proven too high, writes Peter Singer.
Fifty years ago, American chicken farmers found that by keeping their birds in sheds they could produce chickens for the table more cheaply and with less work than by traditional farmyard methods. The new method spread: chickens disappeared from fields into long, windowless sheds. Factory farming was born.
It isn't called "factory farming" merely because those sheds look like factories. Everything about the production method is geared towards turning live animals into machines for converting grain into meat or eggs at the lowest possible cost.
Reuters - 3rd December 2005
Birdflu outbreaks hit more in northern Vietnam
HANOI - Fresh bird flu outbreaks have killed more chickens and ducks in Vietnam's two northern provinces and birds were dying in a third area, the Agriculture Ministry said. Six outbreaks killed 317 ducks and 37 chickens in the port city of Haiphong and Thanh Hoa province on Thursday, prompting workers to slaughter more than 20,400 birds there, the ministry's Animal Health Department said in a report seen on Saturday.
Reuters - 3rd December 2005
Over 1,500 birds found dead in Ukraine
KIEV - Officials in Ukraine, so far free of bird flu, have sent experts to investigate the sudden deaths of more than 1,500 birds in the Crimea peninsula, the Agriculture Minister said on Friday. Oleksander Baranivsky, speaking to 1+1 television, said the birds were found in a half dozen villages in the peninsula jutting into the Black Sea. He gave no details on the type of birds or other information.
Reuters - 3rd December 2005
Ethiopia tests dead pigeons for bird flu
ADDIS ABABA - Ethiopia is testing pigeons found dead in the the east of the country for the virulent form of avian flu, a Ministry of Agriculture official said on Friday. Members of the public alerted authorities to the bird caracasses found in the eastern Somali region of Ethiopia, said Seleshi Zewdie, director of the animal health department in the Ministry of Agriculture.
Reuters - 3rd December 2005
Low-pathogenic Bird flu detected in N. Carolina turkeys
WASHINGTON - Turkeys at a farm in North Carolina tested positive for a mild, low-pathogenic strain of bird flu which is common in birds and poses no threat to humans, the U.S. Agriculture Department said Thursday. Routine tests conducted on poultry in North Carolina found the H3N2 strain of bird flu in turkeys on a farm in Sampson County, in the eastern part of the state, the USDA said.
Reuters - 3rd December 2005
Indonesia preparing bird flu warning system
INDONESIA is preparing an early bird flu warning system that will reach even the most remote areas to speed up reporting of any outbreaks, but a U.N. agency said the scheme needs more than goodwill. The "village preparedness policy" involves local governments setting up health posts in all villages, where personnel including doctors would be alert to flu cases in birds and humans, particularly in infected areas. "It is like an early warning system to achieve integrated communication in order to speed up action," said Syamsul Bahri, director of animal health at the agriculture ministry. Indonesia, with 220 million people, has many millions of chickens and ducks, the majority in the backyards of rural or urban homes.
VNA - 3rd December 2005
Deputy PM asks for more drastic measures to cope with bird flu
HA NOI - Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem has asked localities to continue taking regular preventive measures and add more drastic ones to cope with the bird flu, though the prevention work has been making progress.
At a working session on the fight against bird flu and H5N1 flu in humans in Ha Noi on Dec. 2, Deputy PM Khiem said the number of communes having epidemic outbreaks has been reduced and many provinces and cities have controlled its spread in recent days, however, the control needs to be tightened.
Canadian Press - 3rd December 2005
Philippines bans poultry from Canada
MANILA - The Philippines has banned the importation of birds and poultry products from British Columbia after a strain of the bird flu virus was reportedly discovered there, the agriculture secretary said Friday. The ban covers domestic and wild birds, day-old chicks, eggs and semen, according to the Department of Agriculture. It directed authorities to suspend processing of import and quarantine permits and confiscate all shipments of poultry and poultry products from the province already in the country.
Sun Star - 3rd December 2005
Drive v. avian flu to focus on backyard poultry growers
PHILIPPINES - An aggressive campaign against avian flu virus contamination must also be focused on backyard poultry growers, as this comprises a big percentage of the industry in the Davao Region. Dr. Jean Bacayo, chief of veterinary and quarantine division of the Department of Agriculture in the Davao Region, admitted the difficulty of reaching out to backyard poultry raisers as they are fragmented.
Xinhuanet - 3rd December 2005
Pan-American anti-bird flu plan approved in Brazil
BRASILIA - Experts and authorities from across the Americas issued a declaration on Friday aimed at joining hands to prevent bird flu outbreaks and to collaborate in case that the disease reaches Latin America, officials said here. Participants in the Hemispheric Conference on Vigilance and Prevention of Bird Flu promised to cooperate politically, technically and financially to fight the disease that has already caused the death of 68 people in Asia.
Khaleej Times - 3rd December 2005
Bird flu ‘phobia’ hits UAE poultry industry
ABU DHABI — The UAE poultry industry is facing a real crisis due to bird flu ‘phobia’, which has gripped majority of white meat consumers. The demand for chicken has drastically fallen to the lowest ebb since the announcement last month about the surfacing of the virus in Kuwait.
But some people are also attributing the fall in the sales of UAE poultry farms to other factors, including the flooding of the market by other poultry farms from neighbouring countries, offering their products at competitive prices.
Reuters - 3rd December 2005
Indonesia confirms eighth death from bird flu
JAKARTA - Indonesia has had its eighth human death due to bird flu confirmed by a Hong Kong laboratory affiliated with the World Health Organization, a senior Health Ministry official said on Saturday. Hariadi Wibisono told Reuters the results on the 25-year-old woman, who died earlier this week, made her Indonesia's eighth confirmed death from the H5N1 strain of bird flu.
WorldNetDaily.com - 3rd December 2005
Has feared mutation of avian flu arrived? Doctors in Thailand, Indonesia see 1st signs of human-to-human spread
US - Officials in at least two nations now suspect the avian flu bug has mutated into a virus that is being transmitted from human to human – a development world health authorities have estimated could result in the deaths of tens of millions. Thai health officials have expressed concern that the country's two latest confirmed victims may be the beginning of the much feared human-to-human transmission.
Reuters - 3rd December 2005
X-rays show shared symptoms among bird flu victims
CHICAGO - The lungs of avian flu victims are racked by infections, clogged with pus and surrounded by fluid, and the severity of the symptoms can predict whether the patients will survive, researchers said on Friday.
Based on chest X-rays performed on 14 Vietnamese bird flu patients admitted to Ho Chi Minh City Hospital -- nine of whom died -- researchers at the University of Oxford in England found shared abnormalities that were good predictors of whether the disease would be fatal.
Sci Dev - 3rd December 2005
Feathers fly over claim of 300 bird flu deaths in China
A sharp controversy has broken out over newspaper reports that a top Japanese virologist has alleged China is concealing hundreds of human deaths from bird flu. According to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Masato Tashiro, an advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) and director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo, Japan, made the remarks at a gathering of virologists in Germany on 18 November.
Asian Journal - 2nd December 2005
Firm to donate P70-M worth of anti-flu drugs
PHILIPPINES - local pharmaceutical company has agreed to manufacture and donate $1.25 million (P70 million) worth of an anti-flu medicine to the government to help Filipinos combat the dreaded avian flu virus should it enter the country and infect people.
In the presence of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at Malacañang, officials of the United Laboratories Inc. (Unilab) and the Department of Health signed an agreement under which the drug company would manufacture 500,000 oseltamivir capsules for distribution early next year to government health workers and poultry farm workers who could be exposed to the deadly H5N1 virus.