EU bans exotic bird imports over flu threat

EUROPEAN UNION veterinary experts yesterday approved an EU-wide ban on the import of exotic birds to help counter the threat of bird flu.

“Member states today endorsed a draft commission decision to ban imports from third countries of captive live birds other than poultry for commercial purposes,” a statement from the EU Commission said.

The move was taken after a parrot, imported from Suriname, died in quarantine in Britain over the weekend after contracting the H5N1 flu strain.

It was believed the parrot was infected by other birds in quarantine.

The announcement came just after it was revealed that dead wild geese in western Germany had showed preliminary positive test results for bird flu.

A local health official said they died from poisoning, not the virus.

Further tests would be needed to confirm the virus and to tell whether it was the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, said Stefan Brent, president of the bureau carrying out the testing.

The EU halted imports of live birds and some poultry from Croatia, where authorities started to slaughter 10,000 birds yesterday, a day after Russia confirmed more bird flu in poultry.

France ordered poultry farmed in more than one fifth of the country to be kept inside over concerns that migratory wildfowl could spread bird flu.

Spain banned raising poultry in the open air near wetlands it considers at risk of bird flu, while Bulgaria banned imports of birds from Macedonia and Croatia after both countries reported suspected bird flu outbreaks.

Indonesia confirmed yesterday that a fourth person in the country had died of bird flu, while China said hundreds of farm geese had succumbed to a fresh outbreak of a disease now also spreading quickly to Europe.

The deadly H5N1 virus first surfaced in Asia but appears to be heading west, often on the wings of migrating birds. There are fears that Africa, where many countries have poor health systems, could also soon report cases in birds.

The World Health Organisation has said that it might only be a matter of time before the H5N1 strain develops the ability to pass easily from human to human.

If that happens, millions of people could die and economies grind to a halt as nations ban travel and curb trade to limit the spread of the virus and deal with the sick.

More than 60 people in Southeast Asia have died of bird flu and experts say the world is overdue for a human flu pandemic, with the most likely cause an animal strain which mutates.

Canada’s Prime Minister, Paul Martin, warned that efforts to combat a flu pandemic could suffer badly if governments failed to prevent mass panic in the event of widespread fatalities.

“Public fear, and bad information, could all too easily snowball into panic,” Mr Martin told a conference in Ottawa.