October 13, 2005

Guards already in place against avian flu

RICHMOND—As concerns about a human flu pandemic rise, U.S. and Virginia poultry industry representatives are trying to prevent a Chicken Little-like panic among consumers.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed millions of birds in Southeast Asia or caused them to be destroyed. About 115 people there have contracted the illness from direct contact with diseased birds. While the World Health Organization has warned that the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, there have been no known cases of human-to-human transmission.

Three influenza pandemics have occurred over the past 100 years, “and the likelihood of another is very high, some say even certain,” said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt earlier this week at a news conference in Bangkok, Thailand. “Whether or not H5N1 is the virus that will ultimately trigger such a pandemic is unknown to us.”

An Oct. 11 news release prepared by the National Chicken Council and National Turkey Federation emphasized that standard biosecurity practices in place in the United States present an obstacle to H5N1. “We have never had this particular form of avian influenza in the United States,” said Steve Pretanik, NCC director of science and technology. He added that lesser strains of the virus that have caused problems for U.S. poultry growers have carried no human health risks. The virus is destroyed by the heat of normal cooking, though most birds believed to have avian influenza are destroyed to keep the virus from spreading, and are not sold for meat.

The industry news release also noted that conditions within U.S. commercial poultry operations are radically different from those in Asia, where millions of birds are raised in close conjunction with livestock and human beings, sometimes roaming at large in rural villages and being sold live by the millions in public urban markets. The vast majority of chickens and turkeys in the United States are raised in sheltered conditions, with no contact with other animals and limited contact with humans.

The United States has never imported poultry products from Southeast Asia, and since outbreaks of milder forms of avian flu the federal government has prohibited importing live birds or other potential carriers of the disease. U.S. travelers returning from Southeast Asia are being told to stay away from poultry farms for seven days—long enough for any virus that might be on their clothing or shoes to die.

“There’s a surveillance program in place in Virginia to monitor commercial flocks for the presence of avian flu” of any type, said Tony Banks, a commodity and marketing specialist for Virginia Farm Bureau Federation. “And that surveillance also includes the movement of poultry into Virginia.” It is a cooperative effort among the state’s poultry industry, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

A 2002 outbreak of a lesser strain of avian flu in the Shenandoah Valley wrought more than $130 million in losses to growers and processors. Poultry is Virginia’s largest agricultural commodity in terms of cash receipts.

Avian flu “can result in significant economic losses to the poultry industry” in disease-control expenses, lost production and impact on poultry exports, Banks noted. “People are taking it seriously.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have made general information on avian flu available online at www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/index.htm.

Contact Banks at 804-290-1114 or Pam Wiley, VFBF publications editor, at 804-290-1128.