Here we go again (Avian Influenza)

Latest Articles

Here we go again (Avian Influenza)
Page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4

Downsizer Forum Index -> Poultry

Author

Message

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: 46207
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.

cab

Joined: 01 Nov 2004
Posts: 32429

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 07 9:30 am Post subject:
I can't find any mention of avian influenza outbreaks over there in the States. The risk to you as a smallholder with a few chooks is pretty low, but its good that you're concerned both for your own safety and the welfare of your birds. In your position, I'd go for it. Of course there are no guarantees in this world, but still, thats what I'd do. (and welcome to the site!)

dougal

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

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 07 12:26 pm Post subject:

tigerseye402 (as someone who lives in the U.S.) wrote:

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.

OK, lets look at some figures.
USA 756 lightning deaths 1990/2003.
Call that 60/year for 300 million population.
Or 1 person/year out of 5 million.

Official figures for human deaths from bird flu are less than 300 in 3 years worldwide.
World population is about 6,600 million.
So thats about 1 person/year out of 66 million worldwide.
Not much chance right now.

You are more than 13x more likely to be struck by lightning...

However there is quite a bit of regional variation.
In Wyoming, the risk of being killed by lightning rises to 1 person/year out of only half a million...
And in the entire USA no one has detected, let alone died from, H5N1 bird flu.
So in Wyoming there's a significant risk from lightning, and so far, zero risk from bird flu.

This is a disease that today poses a threat to birds, not people.
And not yet even to birds in the USA.

Public health authorities are however rightly concerned that, sometime in the future, somewhere in the world, the H5N1 bird virus might develop the trick of infecting people as easily as it today infects and spreads among birds. The authorities are concerned that the new version might then sweep the world - but IF it developed the new trick, THEN the risk would be of catching the new H5N1 from people, not from birds.

Lightning statistics here: https://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lls/fatalities_us.html

tigerseye

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

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 07 2:27 pm Post subject:

cab wrote:

I can't find any mention of avian influenza outbreaks over there in the States.

The risk to you as a smallholder with a few chooks is pretty low, but its good that you're concerned both for your own safety and the welfare of your birds. In your position, I'd go for it. Of course there are no guarantees in this world, but still, thats what I'd do.

(and welcome to the site!)

Thanks.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46207
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 07 5:48 pm Post subject:
bury the toaster in quicklime far more likely to kill you

	Downsizer Forum Index -> Poultry	All times are GMT Page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4
Page 4 of 4

View Latest Posts