TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada said on Thursday it had found bird flu on a seventh commercial chicken farm in British Columbia and warned it could not rule out uncovering more cases in the province.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the farm was within a control area where the virus was first discovered in Canada in February, but the it was not of same virulent strain that killed scores of people and wiped out millions of poultry in Asia.
"The risk to human health remains low," the agency said in a statement. The farm's flock has already been slaughtered.
It quarantined the Fraser Valley farm on Monday, and has also quarantined another farm in the same area where it is still doing tests.
The virus has been confirmed on seven commercial farms and in three noncommercial flocks in British Columbia, the food inspection agency said. Most are within the high-risk five-kilometer radius of where the first case of the disease was discovered.
"Given the highly contagious nature of the disease the possibility of finding further cases cannot be excluded," the agency said.
Officials have already imposed bans on transporting chickens through and out of the high risk Fraser Valley area, but British Columbia is not a major international exporter of poultry products.
April 1, 2004, 7:59AM
Reuters News Service
A naphtha processing unit exploded at the Exxon Mobil chemical plant in Baytown early this morning, but there was no indication of foul play and the fire was extinguished in an hour, company spokeswoman said.
The explosion in a "naphtha rerun unit" occurred at 1:30 a.m. CST, said Exxon Mobil spokeswoman Tricia Thompson.
A fire following the explosion was out by 2:30 a.m. CST, Thompson said.
"There is no indication of foul play," Thompson said.
Other units at the chemical plant continue to operate normally as does the adjoining 525,000 barrel per day Exxon Mobil refinery, the largest in the United States.
This is the second explosion at a refinery/chemical plant complex in Texas this week.
On Tuesday night, an ultraformer at BP Plc's 460,000 bpd refinery in Texas City blew up and burned. The cause of that blast is believed to be accidental.
BP said the Texas City refinery was operating at near normal rates Wednesday.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation warned refiners in Texas last week of an unsubstantiated threat to attack a refinery in the state before the U.S. national elections in November.
Refiners have been constantly increasing security at their plants since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.