February 20, 2006
Breitbart
Germany was scrambling to prevent the potentially lethal bird flu virus from spreading to poultry, while Spain and Britain became the latest countries in Europe to carry out tests on dead birds.
France, Europe's top poultry producer, is on a high state of alert after becoming the sixth country in the European Union to confirm a case of the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 which can kill humans.
EU agriculture ministers were meeting in Brussels to coordinate efforts to fight the virus, which is threatening to wreak havoc on the continent's poultry farms.
In Germany, where the virus first broke out on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen last week, outbreaks were confirmed at the weekend on the mainland of the northeast state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said 250 German soldiers would join army specialists already on Ruegen to pick up dead birds.
Cars travelling to or from Ruegen, a popular holiday destination which is joined to the mainland by a bridge, had to drive through disinfectant baths.
All the measures were designed to prevent the virus spreading from wild, migratory birds to poultry -- which has been shut indoors across Germany since Friday.
"The main goal is to stop the spread to domestic animals," a government spokeswoman said.
Denmark, France, Greece, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Slovenia have also all ordered poultry to be shut indoors.
France's first case of the most dangerous form of H5N1 was confirmed on Saturday when it was announced that a wild duck found dead near the central-eastern city of Lyon had the virus.
Apart from Germany and France, the deadliest form of H5N1 has also been detected in the EU member states of Austria, Greece, Italy and Slovenia.
The virus has also been found in Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Ukraine and Russia.
Spain, untouched so far, has ordered tests on two more wild birds, press reports said on Monday.
No bird flu cases have been discovered through tests on some 5,000 birds in Spain since the start of the year, El Pais newspaper reported.
In Britain, further tests were to be made on nine swans after the government admitted the discovery in France had made it more likely the virus could spread.
British Agriculture Minister Ben Bradshaw said however that poultry would be shut inside only in the event of an outbreak of bird flu.
Farmers were also bracing for the worst in The Netherlands, where poultry production has only recently returned to the levels of 2003 when an outbreak of bird flu forced the slaughter of 25 million birds, around a quarter of all domestically reared fowl.
More than 90 people have died from bird flu in China, Southeast Asia, Iraq and eastern Turkey since 2003 after contracting the H5N1 virus from infected poultry.
No human infections have been reported in Europe.
While the virus cannot currently be passed between humans, experts fear that if it acquires this ability it could cause a pandemic.
Agriculture ministers in Brussels were discussing measures to help farmers faced with sharply falling sales.
Despite assurances that poultry is safe to eat, sales are down by 70 percent in Italy, 40 to 50 percent in Greece and 15 percent in France.
Elsewhere in the world, up to half a million birds were slaughtered in India on Sunday after the country's first outbreak of H5N1 near the small town of Navapur in western Maharashtra state.
There have also been outbreaks in northern Nigeria and in Egypt.
An epidemiologist from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told AFP that Africans were safer than Asians.
"The only difference is that in Asia there are more chickens living in close proximity to humans. There has been no mutation of the virus (here) up until now, thank God," Boubacar Seck said.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/20/060220141931.5374xob5.html