Bird flu blown out of proportion, claims food expert

THE bird flu threat was blown out of proportion by the public health community, a leading American food expert claimed yesterday.

Professor Michael Doyle told an international conference in Dublin that enormous media coverage had raised fears of the potential for avian viruses to become pandemic strains that would lead to unstoppable human-to-human transmission.

However, the US Centre for Disease Control is advising that the mutated high pathogen strain of the flu, H5 N1, could not transmit easily to other animals.

Scientists had learned that the large proportion of humans who had receptor sites deep in their lungs could not become infected easily unless they were living with infected birds and inhaling the virus, he said.

Professor Doyle, who is head of the Centre for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, was addressing delegates to the 52nd International Congress on Meat Science and Technology.

He said the concern from the world perspective was that the H5 N1 virus was going to convert into a pandemic strain, resulting in a pandemic as in 1918.

“At this point, looking at the data we have, this pandemic, caused by this particular virus, is less likely to occur than previously thought.

“In the US we have several firewalls or barriers in place, as were put in place in the case of BSE in cattle.

“We have very secure growing facilities and 95% of chickens are grown in high containment facilities, so we’re not going to have problems with birds flying overhead.

“A very intensive testing programme also is in place where we are testing flocks for the virus before they go to slaughter,” he said.

Professor Doyle is one of 450 leading meat scientists attending the congress from all over the world.