Spread of bird flu inevitable, says leading vet

It is inevitable migrating birds will spread avian flu across Europe, one of Britain's leading veterinary scientists has warned.

Dr Bob McCracken, president of the British Veterinary Association, said testing for the virus had to be stepped up to detect it in poultry and wild birds as soon as it arrived.

"Wild birds that have migratory pathways over Europe and the UK will become infected. It is inevitable that bird flu will be carried to this country by migrating birds," he said.

Experts fear a lethal strain of avian flu - which has killed about 60 people in Asia - may be brought to Europe by the birds who then infect domestic free-range poultry.

"The majority of our reared birds are still intensively reared and bred in large houses that are wild-bird proof. The danger is to free-range birds and to backyard flocks," he said.

European officials have agreed to intensify surveillance efforts to detect bird flu by wider testing of wild birds and domestic poultry. But they rejected calls to bring free-range birds indoors, an emergency measure the Dutch Government has decided to enforce.

Dr Debby Reynolds, the Government's chief vet, said although there was a small risk wild birds would introduce the avian flu, the chances of it being the highly lethal strain that affected poultry in Asia were low.

"There is a constant, low-level risk of a low-pathogenic strain being introduced, but there is no evidence that the highly pathogenic virus is spread by migrating birds."

Although mass deaths of migrating birds had been reported in China and in Russia east of the Ural mountains it was possible they had been cross-infected by domestic poultry, she said. Birds infected with the H5N1 strain were probably too ill to travel far, she said.

Nevertheless, European experts would meet next week to discuss the scientific strategy for improving and expanding on the testing of wild birds for the pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian flu, she said.

"When we step up our surveillance across Europe we'll do it in a scientific approach."

Millions of domestic birds have been culled in Asia and more than 100 people have been infected by the H5N1 strain.

 

The concern is the virus may mutate, making it easier for person-to-person transmission.

 

The virus has spread to western China, Mongolia and Russian Siberia where thousands of wild birds have died after becoming infected. In Russia, the outbreak has killed about 11,000 birds, and officials have slaughtered 127,000 others to halt the spread. No human cases have been registered.

Markos Kyprianou, the European commissioner for health and consumer protection, said EU countries would step up testing and improve the biosecurity of poultry farms.

"We will continue to monitor the situation closely to ensure that the most appropriate risk-reducing measures are in place," he said.

A meeting of an EU expert group in Brussels concluded there was still too little information about how the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain was transmitted to determine the extent to which it was spread by migrating birds.

The group also recommended that all EU countries urgently review and intensify the testing of waterfowl along their migration flyways which could pose a risk for introducing the disease.

More than 125 million domestic birds have been culled in the latest outbreak of avian flu in Asia, which spread from Hong Kong to South East Asia and from there to Mongolia, western China and central Russia.

The EU has banned the import of live poultry, untreated feathers and uncooked meat from 11 affected countries.

- INDEPENDENT