Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 14 • Number 3 • 27th January 2010
Efforts to Stem Bird Flu to Target Illegal Poultry Trade in SE Asia
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While swine flu has captured the limelight of the global health agenda, bird flu (H5N1) remains a serious threat, particularly in Southeast Asia.
The illegal trade in poultry and poultry products across borders in this part of the world represents one pathway that the highly lethal disease is spread.
“In Cambodia, illegal or informal trade occurs along its long border with Thailand and Vietnam,” says Khieu Borin, director of Cambodia’s Center for Livestock and Agriculture Department. “There is that informal trade, not just in birds, but eggs and other poultry products, smuggling.” Researchers from Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam have therefore discussed how to better track and stem the trade.
At the fifth regional meeting of the Asian Partnership on Emerging Infectious Diseases Research (APEIR), Chinese scientists also highlighted new evidence they had found of the spread of bird flu in the pathways of migratory birds. The migrating birds may spread the disease to local wild birds, which can then transmit it to poultry bread by humans, according to the researchers.
In related news, India discovered a new outbreak of bird flu in mid-January in its Murshidabad district, after being disease free for eight months and having declared itself officially free of the disease two months ago. Authorities have deployed response teams to contain the outbreak, including through culling tens of thousands of chickens. Public authorities say they fear a worst case scenario that would have bird and swine flu viruses mix and create a new, highly contagious and lethal disease.
“SEAsia To Crack Down On Poultry Smuggling To Fight H5N1,” REUTERS, 19 January 2010; “Bird flu makes a return, dead birds test positive in Murshidabad,” TIMES OF INDIA, 15 January 2010; “AI outbreak closely related to bird migration 18 Jan 2010,” WORLDPOULTRY.NET, 18 January 2010.
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