Monday, November 28, 2016

Bird Flu

there is an ongoing epidemic of bird flu in Europe. Brought in by migrating birds and spreading into poultry farms etc. This means you have to kill the infected birds to stop the epidemic.


Infected ducks in the Netherlands:


 Tests indicated that the birds were killed by an H5N8 variant of the disease "which is highly infectuous" for poultry—killing about 30 percent of infected birds—but not "very dangerous to humans", public newscaster NOS said. Earlier this month the Netherlands shuttered petting zoos and banned duck hunting as it stepped up measures to stem a bird flu outbreak blamed for killing scores of poultry and more than a thousand wild birds in the country. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-dutch-ducks-bird-flu-outbreak.html#jCp

Sweden killed 200 thousand hens. 

The agriculture department stressed that there is no danger of eating eggs from the farm—or Swedish poultry products in general—as the H5N8 virus has never been transmitted from birds to humans. The H5N8 virus has been detected in poultry and wild birds in 10 European countries, according to the World Health Organization: Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and Russia. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-sweden-slaughters-hens-bird-flu.html#jCp

Poultry news reports on outbreakes in Hungary and lower Saxony.

more HERE.

more news at PoultrySite (Israel, Indian bird sanctuary related cases, SouthAfrican ostriches, Taiwan, Laos)


Avian Influenza (Fowl Plague) is a potentially devastating disease, predominantly of chickens and turkeys, although the virus can also affect game birds (pheasants, partridge and quail), ratites (ostrich and emu), psittacine and passerine birds. Avian Influenza is caused by an orthomyxovirus, or influenza virus and can survive for considerable lengths of time outside of the host and birds are infected through contact with other birds, mechanical vectors such as vehicles and equipment and personnel travelling between farms, markets and abattoirs.

This is bad news for the farmers.

The ood news: The strain of bird flu hasn't spread to any humans yet, unlike other strains in previous epidemics. LINK

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