Everyone but the chicken-eaters takes blame for spreading H5N1

[Guest guest]

http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/05/11/everyonebutChickenEaters11.05.htm

 

TULCEA, Romania--The avian flu H5N1, hitting the poultry industry hard

throughout Asia, spreading into Europe, and potentially deadly to humans, has

never infected dogs.

 

 

That did not stop officials hellbent on finding a pretext to kill street dogs

near Balikesir, Turkey, when H5N1 was discovered there in early October. Street

dogs were as easily blamed as anyone for the economic havoc and emotional trauma

resulting from wholesale massacres of domestic poultry in thus far futile

efforts to contain H5N1.

 

 

Rumors of a Romanian dog massacre ascribable to H5N1 panic reached animal

advocacy groups and news media on November 9.

 

 

The killing allegedly occurred near Tulcea in the eastern Danube Delta region,

shortly after the H5N1 virus was on October 13, 2005 confirmed in the carcasses

of three barnyard ducks found dead on a farm in Ceamurlia-de-Jos, Tulcea County.

 

 

Two accounts of the Tulcea dog massacre e-mailed by people who claimed to be

acquaintances of witnesses agreed that the dogs who survived rough capture and

handling were thrown alive into a deep pit, covered with lime, and bulldozed

under. As Tulcea was the scene of a municipal dog massacre in 2001, under a

different political administration, the story sounded plausible.

 

 

Fundatia Daisy Hope founder Aura Maratas, of Bucharest, visited Tulcea to

investigate on November 13. At the Tulcea dump, Maratas interviewed gypsy

trashpickers who " in exchange of some money told us that the dogs were brought

there. "

 

 

Maratas photographed the purported site, but the photos did not prove the story,

and some felt that the photos actually contradicted it.

 

 

Two days of follow-up investigation in Tulcea by ROLDA cofounder Dana Costin and

Romania Animal Rescue founder Nancy Janes on November 26-27 found no evidence

that any such dog massacre ever occurred.

 

 

But potentially infected poultry were killed by similar methods south of Tulcea.

On November 28 Romanian Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur fired local

officials who burned alive many of 15,000 turkeys who were killed on infected

farm near Scarlatesti.

 

 

Realitatea TV video of the killing " showed veterinarians in white medical suits

breaking the necks of poultry before throwing them into a fire burning in a

ditch. Some of the birds were still alive and could be seen struggling, their

wings in flames, in a vain attempt to escape, " reported Agence France-Presse.

 

 

First identified in Hong Kong after three children died from it in 1996, H5N1

spread rapidly throughout Southeast Asia beginning in mid-2003. Nearly 70 people

have succumbed to H5N1 since then, almost all of them poultry workers,

cockfighters, or residents of homes shared with live fowl.

 

 

More than 100 million chickens, ducks, geese, and other domestic birds have been

killed by gassing, neck-breaking, and/or being buried or burned alive in

unsuccessful " stamping out " exercises. Vaccination is increasingly believed to

be the only effective method of protecting domestic flocks from H5N1

transmission, despite the difficulty of distinguishing birds who carry the

disease from birds who have developed antibodies from being vaccinated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Newly hatched ducklings (Kim Bartlett)

Chinese national chief veterinarian Jia Youling on November 15 announced

that " China is trying to vaccinate all poultry nationwide. " After experiencing

just two outbreaks nationwide in 2004, one in Tibet and one in Xinjiang, China

suddenly had 10 outbreaks in 31 days after October 14, afflicting Inner

Mongolia, two locations each in Xinjiang and Anhui, and additional sites in

Hunan, Liaoning, and Hubei provinces.

 

 

Producing about 14 billion chickens per year, 21% of the global total,

China has approximately 5.2 chickens and other domestic fowl on farms at any

given time. H5N1 spread in fall 2005 to Russia, Turkey, Romania and Croatia--and

was almost immediately invoked as an excuse to kill dogs in Balikesir, Turkey,

where H5N1 first appeared in Turkey, even before the presence of the disease in

birds was confirmed.

 

 

A subtext to the dog massacres in both Turkey and Romania is that both

nations have unenforced legislation which purportedly restricts killing street

dogs to situations in which public health is in imminent jeopardy.

 

 

Blaming cats

 

 

A tiger, a clouded leopard, and several domestic cats all from one household who

were fed diets consisting almost entirely of poultry killed by H5N1 contracted

H5N1 in Thailand in early 2004. The tiger recovered. Except for those incidents,

cats seem almost as resistant as dogs.

 

 

Yet cats have apparently also been wrongly targeted as potential H5N1 carriers,

the Xinhua News Agency reported from Shenyang on November 12. Soon after H5N1

hit farms in Badaohao Township, Heishan County, Liaoning, 30 farm cats died

between October 25 and November 9 of an unknown cause. The Liaoning provincial

animal health department found no trace of H5N1 in either the dead cats or 82

live cats. Rather, the 30 dead cats were apparently poisoned.

 

 

In Indonesia, a nation which has been especially slow to respond to H5N1

outbreaks among poultry, avian flu researchers Chaerul Nidom of Airlangga

University in Surabaya, East Java, and Wayan Teguh Wibawan of Bogor Institute of

Agriculture on October 27 told Agence France-Presse that cats might be

significant H5N1 carriers.

" We have suspected cases in isolated areas, far from any potential sources of

contamination such as poultry or pig farms, " Wibawan claimed, " and on the other

hand, we have almost no suspected human infection cases among workers in the

poultry industries, including those hit by the bird flu. "

 

 

Nidom named cats, dogs, hamsters, rats, and mice as possible vectors. " The most

likely candidates are cats, " Nidom asserted.

 

 

Responded World Health Organi-zation representative for Indonesia Georg

Petersen, " Worldwide, more than 80% of H5N1 infections can be traced back to

contact with poultry. In some countries, there have been reports of animals such

as tigers and cats being infected just as with pigs, " Peterson agreed, " but so

far we have no report of anyone contracting the virus from animals other than

poultry. There is so far no indication that animals other than poultry or pigs

are sources of infections for humans.

 

 

" Studies are welcome, " Peterson conceded. " We certainly need to know more, but I

think [the possibility of feline H5N1 transmission] is not something that is

important at this point in time. "

 

 

The real problem in Indonesia, suggested retired Bogor Institute veterinary

lecturer Marthen Malole, is that while " Chickens continue to die of the disease

here and there, farmers are reluctant to report the deaths, " from fear of losing

their livelihoods, " and the government certainly does not have the capability to

monitor everything. "

 

 

Trafficking

 

 

Another plausible explanation is that Indonesia is believed to lead the world in

illegal bird trafficking. The extent of the traffic --and of government

involvement in it--was indicated on October 14 when five leading Indonesian

conservation groups announced that they were ready to denounce to police three

high-ranking officials of the Natural Resources Conservation Agency.

 

 

" The activists revealed that they have documentation taken with a hidden video

camera that shows the three officials extorting a pet shop owner in North

Jakarta, threatening to close the shop for selling protected animals if he does

not pay up, " wrote Abdul Khalik of the Jakarta Post.

 

 

The coalition members also accused the three officials of selling confiscated

wildlife. The alleged transaction captured on videotape involved 24 turtles, but

the officials under surveillance also dealt in cockatoos, the coalition

spokespersons said. ProFauna Indonesia chair Rosek Nursahid believes as many as

100,000 cockatoos per year are illegally trapped from the wild and exported or

illegally sold at Indonesian markets.

 

 

Coalition members included Pro-Fauna Indonesia, the People's Information Center,

the Animal Advocacy Group, the Indonesian Society for Animal Welfare, and the

Alliance for Indonesian Wildlife.

 

 

Bird-smuggling of various sorts is flagrant throughout most of Southeast

Asia--and H5N1 often turns up among the bootlegged birds.

 

 

On October 20, for example, H5N1 was confirmed among eight of 276 dead birds who

were confiscated six days earlier by the Taiwan Coast Guard, along with 1,037

live birds. A Panamian-registered ship allegedly brought the birds from Fuzhou,

China, to Taichung harbor. The birds who survived the journey were killed on

shipboard.

 

 

The illegal traffic reaches into Europe as well. While investigating how an

orange-winged Amazon parrot came to be fatally infected with H5N1 at a

quarantine station operated by Pegasus Birds Ltd., British undercover operatives

learned that Pegasus owner Brett Hammond " secretly imported thousands of exotic

birds using fake documents more than a decade ago, according to court records, "

reported Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Steven Swinford of the London Times.

 

 

Jailed for a year for tax evasion, Hammond was nonetheless allowed to keep

operating one of the 83 quarantine stations that are considered the first

British line of defense against H5N1 and other zoonotic diseases.

 

 

" The center consists of a group of ramshackle sheds in the garden of a

semi-detached house in South Fambridge, Essex, " Ungoed-Thomas and Swinford

added. " It has emerged that 32 other birds died there before the parrot, " whose

reported H5N1 demise was discovered on October 22, " and that some of those were

also infected with avian flu. "

 

 

The case took an additional turn on November 14 when the National Emergency

Epidemiology Group for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

announced that the parrot didn't have H5N1 after all. Instead, samples were

mixed up by the testing laboratory. The H5N1 strain found at the center probably

came from some of about 50 Asian finches who were housed there, notably a

blue-headed pionus from Surinam and a mesia from Taiwan, found dead together on

October 14.

 

 

Poultry farms

 

 

Globally, politicians and mass media into mid-November 2005 continued to point

toward migratory birds as vectors for H5N1. Indeed H5N1 has often been detected

first among migratory birds, who are outdoors and therefore more easily exposed

than most commercially produced poultry, typically raised entirely indoors in

close confinement. However, infected wild birds have only been found in the

mid-portions of their north/south range, far from where populations converge in

northern latitudes.

 

 

" Wild birds appear to acquire the virus through contact with infected poultry or

with facilities used by them, " pointed out BirdLife International spokesperson

Ade Long. " H5N1 evolved in poultry from low pathogenicity avian influenza

viruses probably acquired from wild birds, " Long conceded, but noted that

" Conditions in poultry flocks, such as crowding and prolonged contact with

feces, saliva and other bodily secretions, keep the viruses circulating as they

evolve.

 

 

" A dramatic increase in intensive poultry production [in Southeast Asia], " Long

continued, " is sometimes combined with poor hygiene and bio-security. " Domestic

ducks are commonly turned out to feed in rice fields alongside waterbirds during

the day, and confined with other poultry at night. Birds from different areas

are brought together in networks of poultry markets, and are often transported

hundreds of miles.

 

 

" Within Southeast Asia, movements of poultry and poultry products are known to

have been involved in the spread of H5N1, " Long recited. " Outbreaks in China,

Kazakh-stan and southern Russia are connected by major road and rail routes.

 

 

" The transmission routes between outbreaks in Asia do not follow migratory

flyways, " Long emphasized. Further, " Many of these outbreaks also occurred in

summer, when birds are moulting and do not fly far. "

 

 

" Researchers in the U.S. and China have been monitoring wild birds for several

years, looking for healthy birds carrying H5N1, " wrote Dennis Normile of

Science. " So far, both searches have found nothing. But outbreaks among wildfowl

in remote corners of China and Mongolia, " Normile argued, " where movements of

domestic poultry have been ruled out as a cause, are forcing some to change

their minds. "

 

 

Bird fighting

 

 

However, overlooked in those cases --as ANIMAL PEOPLE pointed out to the

membership of the International Society for Infectious diseases on August 27--is

that wild bird fights are a frequent marketplace gambling pastime in these parts

of Central Asia, as in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and nearby parts of

Russia.

 

 

Held by threads, freshly captured wild songbirds are briefly pitted against each

other, then released to avoid violating the Islamic prohibition on caging wild

birds.

 

 

Wild bird fights often occur in the same pits as cockfights, in proximity to

domestic poultry.

 

 

The pattern of H5N1 spread has been almost entirely from the east coast of the

Asian mainland to the west. The few instances of eastward spread, to Japan,

Taiwan, and the Philippines, have almost all been linked to illegal commerce in

wild birds, gamecocks, and other smuggled domestic fowl.

 

 

The Thai Livestock Development Department has " set up 32 checkpoints nationwide

to control movement of fowl, " Kultida Samabuddhi of the Bangkok Post reported on

October 31, " but owners of fighting cocks are hiding the birds in cars, which

are beyond the officers' ability to interdict. "

 

 

Bad vaccines

 

 

Illegal commerce in ineffective homebrewed vaccines is also a factor in H5N1

transmission.

 

 

" Drug salesmen who smuggled out an unlicensed vaccine still being tested and

sold it on the market have been blamed for the massive outbreak of bird flu in

Liaoning province, " China, South China Morning Post Beijing correspondent

Josephina Ma disclosed on November 12.

 

 

Citing an earlier report published by China Business News, Ma wrote that a

vaccine bootlegged into use while still undergoing clinical tests " was the

culprit for the rapid spread of the disease among 18 villages in Liaoning, where

more than three million birds have been culled. Farmers in infected areas said

they had already vaccinated their poultry against H5N1, " Ma continued, " but

large numbers still died. Many farmers in Heishan county had used a vaccine

produced by Inner Mongolia Jingyu Group, a Shanghai company, which offered

little protection against the deadly disease.

 

 

" China Business News said the company was given special approval to produce the

vaccine last year by the Ministry of Agricul-ture, " Ma wrote, " due to the

pressing demand for H5N1 vaccines, but the vaccine was intended for testing in

infected areas exclusively, and it was not supposed to be sold.

 

 

" After the outbreak, " Ma added, " the company's licence to produce veterinary

medicine was suspended and the firm admitted some of the vaccine was sold to

Heishan, although it said the amount was small. "

 

 

Similar cases have occurred throughout Southeast Asia, typically involving

smuggled Chinese products.

" Raisers of fighting cocks are allegedly the major buyers of Chinese-made bird

flu vaccines for birds, which are being smuggled through the border town of

Chiang Saen in Chiang Rai province, " charged Teerawat Khamthit of the Bangkok

Post on October 30. Chiang Saen customs official Patcharadit Sinsawat told

Teerawat Khamthit that 1,377 bottles of avian flu vaccines had been seized at

his port, from five cargos, since June 2005.

 

 

Problems have reportedly also developed in connection with hastily produced

batches of Tamiflu, one of the few antiviral drugs that is believed to be

generally effective against H5N1, and possibly with illicitly produced and

distributed generic knockoffs.

 

 

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in November reiterated an

earlier warning that Tamiflu may induce strange behavior, citing the cases of

two teenagers who took it. One, a 17-year-old high school student, jumped in

front of a truck after taking Tamiflu in February 2004, according to the

newspaper Mainichi Shimbun and the Kyodo News. The other teenager either fell or

jumped from the ninth floor of his apartment building in February 2005.

 

 

Tamiflu in Japan carries a label warning that side effects might include

abnormal behavior and hallucinations. --M.C.