Bird Flu Outbreak in England

February 14, 2007


	USDA
	Scientists fear that the virus that struck a British turkey farm could easily mutate to infect humans, with drastic consequences.

In early February, an outbreak of the deadly Asian strain of avian influenza, H5N1, struck the British poultry industry for the first time. Nearly 160,000 turkeys died at an industrial poultry facility owned by Bernard Matthews PLC, the largest turkey producer in Europe.

Predictably, fingers were quick to point to wild birds as the culprits, but the blame does not fall on the wings of migratory birds alone. A 2006 international scientific conference sponsored by the world's leading veterinary and agriculture authorities came to the consensus that the main means of spread of this disease was the commercial trade in poultry products.(1) Bird flu seems to have disseminated via the railways(2) and highways, not the flyways.(3)

While H5N1 is currently almost exclusively a virus affecting birds, experts fear that it may mutate into a human virus capable of triggering a flu pandemic that could kill millions of people around the world.(4)

Factory Farms, Not Wild Birds

One biologist remarked that the reason the focus seems to have remained on wild birds is that "[c]orporations pay more taxes than migratory birds do...."(5) Indeed, it wasn't until damning revelations came to light that the infected British turkey factory farm had been importing more than 40 tons of semi-processed turkey meat each week from Hungary—a country actively stricken with H5N1—that the U.K. government flipped its position and admitted that infected meat, not wild birds, most likely brought the virus into the country. Preliminary testing of the virus recovered from the British facility reportedly showed it identical to the Hungarian strain.(6)

Just one month earlier, in January 2007, the European Union passed a permanent ban on the importation of wild birds to prevent the spread of avian flu, but specifically exempted the global trade in live domestic poultry,(7) which may pose an even higher risk. This legislative action followed a temporary ban implemented in October 2005.

Are We Waiting Too Long?

In the United States, however, the federal government has yet to impose even an interim ban. The importation of birds and bird products from H5N1-affected countries are barred, but this limited measure risks introduction of the virus in birds smuggled into H5N1-"free" countries from a third, contaminated country—a risk realized in Europe in 2005 when a parrot imported from South America, a continent not known to harbor the H5N1 virus, was found to be infected, possibly having picked the virus up from birds smuggled from China.(8) Similarly, waiting to ban a country's imports until H5N1 has been detected may be too late to protect the nation's residents—both avian and human.

Enforcement of the partial U.S. ban is critical, but lacking. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported that a shipment of chicken parts labeled as "jellyfish" was allegedly smuggled into the United States from bird flu-infected Thailand and distributed to ten states before it was confiscated.(9) At a single port in California, customs agents intercepted illegal shipments of nearly 75 tons of poultry and about 100,000 eggs smuggled in from Asia, ground zero for H5N1 avian influenza, within a three-month period in 2005.(10)

The Roots of Bird Flu

The globalization of the industrial poultry industry has not only facilitated the spread of deadly viruses like H5N1, they may have played a role in their emergence in the first place. In October 2005, the United Nations issued a press release on bird flu: "We are wasting valuable time pointing fingers at wild birds when we should be focusing on dealing with the root causes of this epidemic spread which...[in part include] farming methods which crowd huge numbers of animals into small spaces."(11)

The UN specifically called on governments to fight the role of factory farming: "Governments, local authorities and international agencies need to take a greatly increased role in combating the role of factory-farming, commerce in live poultry, and wildlife markets which provide ideal conditions for the virus to spread and mutate into a more dangerous form...."(12)

(1) Normile D. 2006. Wild birds only partly to blame in spreading H5N1. Science 312(5779):1451.

(2) Boon D. 2006. Wild birds, poultry, and avian influenza. Lancet Infectious Diseases 6:262.

(3) Melville DS and Shortridge KF. 2004. Influenza: time to come to grips with the avian dimension. Lancet Infectious Diseases 4:261-2.

(4) Murray CJ, Lopez AD, Chin B, Feehan D, and Hill KH. 2007. Estimation of potential global pandemic influenza mortality on the basis of vital registry data from the 1918-20 pandemic: a quantitative analysis. Lancet 368(9554):2211-8.

(5) Horner N. 2006. Genetic diversity keeping the bird flu at bay. Parksville Qualicum News, May 9.

(6) McCarthy M. 2007. Bird flu may be linked to meat from Hungary, says government. The Independent, February 9.

(7) United Nations. 2007. UN-backed body 'disappointed' by European action on wild bird trade. January 12.

(8) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. 2005. Epidemiology report published on H5N1 in Essex quarantine. DEFRA News Release, November 15.

(9( 2005. Avian flu news tracker. Wall Street Journal Online, December 16.

(10) Butler D and Ruttiman J. 2006. Avian flu and the New World. Nature 441:137-9.

(11) United Nations. 2005. UN task forces battle misconceptions of avian flu, mount Indonesian campaign. UN News Centre, October 24.

(12) Ibid.

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