Here we go again (Avian Influenza)

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Here we go again (Avian Influenza)
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dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 07 12:47 pm Post subject:

Justme wrote:

Its only just occured to me but why did I recived a letter from the gov (DEFRA) about free flu jabs (if you are registered & have over 50 hens) over week before the out break?

Because the UK admistrators are (IMHO unreasonably excessively) concerned about the risk of any *people* at all catching human/seasonal flu AND bird flu at the same time - as that is precisely the situation that would accelerate the evolution of a form of the H5N1 virus that could transmit effectively from human to human leading to a human pandemic.

Why do I think that the UK administration's concern is unreasonably excessive? Because so very many people in the 'third world' are so much more closely exposed to the bird form of the virus. And they get human flu too. And creatures like pigs have historically acted as an 'intermediate host' bridging the gap between animal and human diseases.
If a human pandemic form of H5N1 evolves there is a massively larger chance of it evolving in SE Asia (my bet would be Indonesia) than of such evolution occurring in the UK. (And the human disease would then be spread by human travel, not birds or poultry.)
But they say you can't be too careful.
I'd suggest that risks need to be kept in proportion. Being excessively disproportionately careful about one risk isn't helpful.
During WW2, Singapore was fantastically well defended against attack from the sea.
The Japanese attacked over land. And met little resistance because the big guns had been built, fixed, all pointing in the wrong direction.

Sure give seasonal flu jabs to poultry workers near an outbreak. But to give seasonal flu jabs to ALL poultry workers/keepers in the country, just in case, seems excessive to me. But thats just IMHO.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46212
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 07 5:49 pm Post subject:
possibly if one gets person flu and bird flu there can be a genetic meld to make high transmission person to person x high fatality strain (like the warfare labs hold ) so what 6.25 billion and rising ,the planet needs a low side effect cure for humans i'll get me hat (with a bit of a sniffle )

Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 07 5:51 pm Post subject:
I've been thinking about this from a different angle - I've got an 'orrible fluey cold, does that mean I should keep away from my chickens?

chez

Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 35935
Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 07 5:58 pm Post subject:

Mrs Fiddlesticks wrote:

I've been thinking about this from a different angle - I've got an 'orrible fluey cold, does that mean I should keep away from my chickens?

Definitely! You don't want them getting the sneezes and you having to medicate them with chicken-sized portions of lemsip and little hankies

Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 07 6:01 pm Post subject:

Chez wrote:

Mrs Fiddlesticks wrote:

I've been thinking about this from a different angle - I've got an 'orrible fluey cold, does that mean I should keep away from my chickens?

Definitely! You don't want them getting the sneezes and you having to medicate them with chicken-sized portions of lemsip and little hankies

Def not.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46212
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 07 6:11 pm Post subject:
only cos you should be tucked up and the chooks need to get to meet a new freind with snacks and bedding and ankles quaaaarrrrrk pk pk pk pk awwwwk if you are poorly enough for it to matter you will be lying down in doors imho there are 6+ billion of us and probably nearly as many chooks ,long term it wont matter , the genes seem quite robust .

nettie

Joined: 02 Dec 2004
Posts: 5888
Location: Suffolk

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 07 12:53 am Post subject:
Well the best that could come out of this is that Bernard Matthews loses business.

Bernie66

Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 13967
Location: Eastoft

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 07 9:02 am Post subject:
At least they have confirmed that the vet with possible bird flu is all clear this morning

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 07 9:12 am Post subject:

Thus far, the best info we have is that this has been handled extremely well. How precisely the bug got into that farm we don't know (and will probably never know), and the fact that it hit an intensive farm is a reminder of just how tightly packed livestock is in there.

Not out of the woods yet, but so far, so good. This could yet be the virus that mutates and produces the global pandemic that we all (rightly) fear, but what we can do is ensure that it doesn't happen on our watch. So far, so good; the response was appropriate, quite fast (I've no doubt lessons will have been learned to make it faster if needed again), and apparently effective. Hats off to them.

Mrs Fiddlesticks

Joined: 02 Nov 2004
Posts: 10460

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 07 9:45 am Post subject:
I thought that the vet was very sensible and responsible to have checked himself in to the hospital as a precaution. Glad to hear that all's well.

Barnie

Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Posts: 40
Location: SW/Wales

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 07 9:48 pm Post subject:

dougal wrote:

Barnie wrote:

On another forum the source is said to be, and I quote....

"cheap birds bought in by Bernard Matthews a few weeks ago from East Europe where a small out break occurred"

Makes sense, I bet BM uses it's finacial power to keep that one out of the news

Does it make sense?

The incubation period of the disease in domestic poultry is a matter of hours, or days at the most.
So if the birds had only newly arrived, that might, just possibly, be the case.
There was an H5N1 report last week from Hungary. (3,000 geese.)

If these birds really were recent arrivals from abroad, that important fact will emerge soon enough.

However, personally, I'd want to establish the bona fides and reliability of such an 'internet source' before giving any credibility whatsoever to such rumours.

It's starting to make even more sense now that the H5N1 strain found at the BM plant has proved to be identical to the recent Hungarian outbreak, and BM has finally admitted that poultry products from Hungary do arrive at it's plant in Suffolk

Chez wrote:

Definitely! You don't want them getting the sneezes and you having to medicate them with chicken-sized portions of lemsip and little hankies

Bernie66

Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 13967
Location: Eastoft

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 07 9:51 pm Post subject:

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 07 11:33 pm Post subject:

Barnie - the government vets have very carefully said tonight that "in preliminary tests... {the virus} ... may well be identical".
Which the BBC has taken to headlining as "the virus IS identical".
They may either be being deliberately bold or plain sloppy.

Suggestions of meat coming from INSIDE the Hungarian exclusion zone, being processed alongside the Suffolk sheds, and the area having scraps left lying around to be eaten by rats and crows - may explain why the disease could be found in *four* of the sheds (not one as initially reported), and why the virus could well be 'identical'.

This seems to be the story of tomorrow's papers - at least the Times and Mail - and presumably the Guardian, which, as I go off to bed is the only one to have their story on their website.

Quote:

The Observer can reveal that a consignment of turkeys, which had been partly processed, travelled by lorry from the Hungarian plant and arrived in the UK a few days before January 27, the date when farm workers began to notice the first signs of illness in the turkey chicks at the farm near Holton, Suffolk.
A Whitehall source said there were concerns about bio-security at the processing plant, which lies adjacent to the Holton farm, where the infected birds were found. Officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are looking at allegations that scraps of meat are sometimes left lying around the floor of the plant and are scavenged by rats and wild birds, creating a possible route for infection.

Defra was aware last Monday that a consignment of meat had been taken into the plant but it was not revealed to the public. The environment secretary, David Miliband, made no mention of it when he made a statement to the House of Commons that day. Nor was it revealed by Lord Rooker, the agriculture minister, in the Lords earlier today. Lord Rooker confirmed that there had been no importation of chicks or eggs into Britain, but did not mention the possibility that carcasses had been transported into the plant.

https://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2008935,00.html

The blame game is off and running.
And it now has a political angle, with the Tories actively seeking to embarrass the government.

If it turns out that the meat DID come from the exclusion zone, and The Observer & Guardian have an accurate version of the story, and that the biosecurity was abysmal rather than good enough to restrain even H5N1 to a single shed, AND that Mathews corporate statements have been, er, careless with the truth - then, the future for the business must be bleak.
And would be absolutely, completely, unquestionably deservedly so.

There is then another independent issue.
Is there more of the disease, unreported, in Hungary?

Barnie

Joined: 26 Jan 2007
Posts: 40
Location: SW/Wales

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 07 12:02 am Post subject:

dougal wrote:

If it turns out that the meat DID come from the exclusion zone, and The Observer & Guardian have an accurate version of the story, and that the biosecurity was abysmal rather than good enough to restrain even H5N1 to a single shed, AND that Mathews corporate statements have been, er, careless with the truth - then, the future for the business must be bleak.
And would be absolutely, completely, unquestionably deservedly so.

Well it's pretty obvious BM has already been conservative with the truth, not really indicative of a person made commander of the 'Royal Victorian Order'... or is it..?

https://www.labourhome.org/story/2006/12/30/45043/771

tigerseye

Joined: 22 Sep 2006
Posts: 2
Location: New York

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 07 8:21 am Post subject:
So.. as someone who lives in the U.S. and is thinking about getting a few chickens, do you think that there is anything to worry about? Honestly I think I'd probably be more likely to be struck by lightning going outside to take care of the chickens than to catch bird flu from them. Still, just wondering.

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