Jalgaon bird flu outbreak dampens poultry industry

Seen as further damaging chances of recovery

Yet another outbreak of avian influenza, this time at Jalgaon in Maharashtra, has come as a dampener to the poultry industry, which was getting back on track after a major crisis.

“This outbreak could further damage our chances of recovery,” said Mr Bharat Tandon, Chairman, Compound Live Stock Feed Manufacturers Association of India. “We have to learn to live with it,” he said.

The losses to the entire industry after the first outbreak of avian influenza would be Rs 4,000-5,000 crore.

Following the first outbreak of avian influenza, retail sales of poultry products are yet to pick up even as institutional sales have commenced. “The defence services, railways and airlines have put back chicken on their menu but unless retail sales pick up, profit margins would remain severely under pressure for the industry,” said Mr Tandon.

“The industry is just about on the road to recovery though prices have not picked up,” said an official of Venkateshwara Group.

Retail sales of poultry products account for the bulk of sales, though institutional sales have helped an improvement in offtake to a certain extent.

“The poultry industry has been severely impacted by the outbreak of the avian influenza. Many of the small farmers would be hit badly as they have not been able to cover their cost of production,” said Mr Tandon. The bigger farms may be able to edge back as volumes help where margins are thin.

Prices, which had fallen as much as 40-50 per cent, have edged up but are still far from their normal prices. “With this Jalgaon episode, prices could fall,” Mr Tandon said. As Jalgaon is not a high-density area, chances of the disease spreading could be low.

Educating farmers

Meanwhile, the poultry industry is stepping up efforts to educate farmers on bio-security measures.

Faced with bleak prospects, following the outbreak of avian influenza, farmers, including those involved in backyard poultry, are being forced to take bio-security measures seriously, industry representatives said. The big poultry firms are asking their farmers to step up bio-security measures, Mr Tandon said.

Although the industry claims that bio-security measures have been implemented quite stringently, at the field level there are indications that the birds are kept in unhygienic conditions that could lead to spread of diseases.

However, there has been no transmission of the flu to humans so far, said Dr Vijay Satbir Singh, Secretary, Public Health Department, Maharashtra Government.

Hindu Business Line

India bird flu cases ‘positive’

The authorities in the western Indian state of Maharashtra say they have identified four cases of the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain. Tests on poultry from the state’s Jalgaon district have returned positive results, the local administrative head, Vijay Singhal, told the BBC.

Over 70,000 chickens in the region are to be slaughtered, officials say.

Hundreds of thousands of birds were destroyed in Maharashtra after India’s first bird flu outbreak last month.

The virus later spread to some poultry farms in the neighbouring Gujarat state.

here have still been no reported cases of the virus in humans in India – 95 samples collected from people with flu-like symptoms last month tested negative for bird flu.

The fresh cases have been detected in poultry in four villages of Jalgaon district, federal farm minister Sharad Pawar told parliament on Tuesday.

“We are dealing with the situation on a war footing,” Mr Singhal said.

Sixty teams have been deployed in the villages to begin the mass slaughter of chickens.

Farmers are to be paid 40 rupees (almost a dollar) in compensation for each bird.

Medical teams will also be sent to the villages and their surrounding areas on Thursday to carry out checks and treat anyone suspected to be infected with the bird flu virus.

Sales fall

The detection of bird flu in India last month led to sharp falls in the sale of poultry and poultry products.

India’s parliament, military, railways and major airlines temporarily stopped serving chicken and eggs, despite government reassurances that they were safe to eat if cooked properly.

The virus does not at present pose a large-scale threat to humans, as it cannot pass easily from one person to another.

However since 2004 about 100 people have died of the H5N1 strain – most of then in South-East Asia.

Experts fear the virus could mutate to gain this ability, and in its new form trigger a flu pandemic, potentially putting millions of human lives at risk.

BBC

India battles bird flu, virus kills Azeri dog

Health workers went door-to-door looking for people with bird flu symptoms in western India on Wednesday, while the virus killed a dog in the former Soviet state of Azerbaijan.Denmark became the latest European country to report a case of highly pathogenic bird flu in wild fowl, although it has yet to confirm it is the feared H5N1 strain that has killed around 100 people in Asia and the Middle East.

Neighbouring Sweden said on Wednesday that tests had identified H5N1 in two wild ducks found on its east coast, confirming its first outbreak.

In recent weeks, bird flu has pushed deep into Europe, taken hold in Africa and flared anew in Asia, adding urgency to efforts to contain its spread and prevent a pandemic.

While it remains mostly a disease of poultry, bird flu can occasionally infect humans who have direct contact with sick birds.

Scientists fear it is only a matter of time before the H5N1 virus mutates into a form that passes easily among people, triggering a pandemic which could kill millions and cripple the global economy.

Indian officials said they were checking if the latest outbreak — which occurred in backyard poultry in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra state — was the deadly H5N1 strain.

Three young women who died in recent weeks in Azerbaijan, on the crossroads between Europe and Asia, are thought to be the latest human victims of the virus.

Azerbaijan said on Wednesday that bird flu had been detected in a stray dog found in the capital Baku on March 9.

There have been recent reports of H5N1 infections in Germany in cats and a marten, a weasel-like creature.

The World Health Organisation says that only domestic poultry are know to have played a role in transmitting the virus to humans, but has also called for further investigation into the significance of infection in other mammals.

INDIA TAKES NO CHANCES

Afghanistan is virtually certain the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in chickens, but is awaiting one final test for confirmation, a government official said on Wednesday.

The government said on Monday an H5 subtype bird flu virus was confirmed in three chickens in Kabul and two in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

“Five cases have registered positive for H5N1,” said Mustafa Zahir, director-general of the National Environmental Protection Agency, referring to test results from Italy.

“We’re 99 percent sure but there is one test left to confirm it,” he told Reuters.

The secretive Asian state of Myanmar has also just detected its first case of H5N1 and the virus appears to be spreading.

Thousands of chickens have been slaughtered on five more farms in central Myanmar after hundreds of birds died of bird flu-like symptoms, the U.N. food agency said on Wednesday.

The five farms are in the same area in Mandalay Division, 430 miles (700 km) north of Yangon, where the country’s first outbreak of the H5N1 virus was found on two farms on March 8.

After its first outbreak last month in birds, also in Maharashtra, India tested more than 100 people for bird flu but all proved negative.

“We are not taking any chances and are straightaway going for a household check to see if there are any people with flu-like symptoms,” Vijay Satbir Singh, Maharashtra’s most senior health official, told Reuters.

“If need be, we are ready to quarantine people with flu-like symptoms in local hospitals,” he said.

Health workers carrying kits used for collecting blood samples visited houses asking families with poultry if anyone had fever, cough or cold, Singh said.

The first outbreak resulted in the loss of millions of dollars to the large poultry industry in India where it is estimated that more than half the 1.1 billion population eat chicken.

NZ govt kicks off bird flu campaign

The New Zealand government began a campaign to raise public awareness on bird flu Wednesday.”Taking simple steps to prepare for a possible bird flu pandemic” is the focus of the 1 million NZ dollars (700,000 U.S. dollars) nation-wide promotion.

Health Minister Pete Hodgson said information from the health sector on pandemic preparedness had already been seen by two-thirds of New Zealanders, but only one-third had actually taken steps to prepare.

“We now need to convince New Zealanders to make sure they’re as ready as they can be for a possible flu pandemic.”

The series of television advertisements will screen on TV1, TV2 nd TV3, in conjunction with radio advertisements being aired on stations across the county.

Advertising on Maori and Pacific radio and television will begin early next week and will coincide with a mail-out to 1.4 million households.

According to World Health organization figures, 176 people have been infected with bird flu around the world since 2003, of whom 97 have died.

Hodgson said there was no certainty the spread of bird flu around the world would lead to a human flu pandemic.

“But we do know we’ll be much better prepared if we all start building up supplies and start practicing good hygiene today,” said Hodgson.

Xinhua News Agency

Pandemic would cut growth: Report

An avian flu pandemic would take a two to six percentage point bite out of global economic growth, bank economist Sherry Cooper said in a report released Monday.
It could also cause birth rates to plunge and result in an older population, leading to sustained labour shortages, the report said.
As experts watch the bird flu spread, Cooper, the chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns, has been rallying Bay Street and investors to prepare for a possible pandemic.
On Monday, she released her third report looking at the potential economic impacts. It came as the International Monetary Fund released a study which said that: “If the pandemic is severe, the economic impact is likely to be significant, though predictions are subject to a high degree of uncertainty.”
The IMF said the pandemic’s impact will depend on its attack and fatality rates, its duration, the preparedness of households and companies, and the capacity and preparedness of health-care systems.
“A pandemic similar to the 1918 Spanish flu could result in high level(s) of illness and death, and a sharp but only temporary decline in global economic activity,” the IMF said.
It also said that “a severe pandemic could pose risks to the global financial system.” Risk-averse investors would boost demand for liquidity, cash and low-risk assets. The “flight to quality” would cause declines in asset prices and widening credit spreads, the IMF said. Commodity prices would fall, but that could be offset by potential supply disruptions for key commodities like oil.
“Market operations could become more disorderly in the case of a breakdown in the trading infrastructure, leading to limited or intermittent trading,” the IMF added.
In Cooper’s report, she predicts that a mild pandemic would reduce annual gross domestic product growth by two percentage points, while a severe pandemic — similar to the 1918 Spanish flu — would reduce global GDP growth by six percentage points.
With current global growth forecasts of about four per cent in 2006, a mild pandemic would not be enough to cause a formal recession in the United States or Canada, but a severe pandemic would push the global economy to contract for the first time since the Second World War, Cooper said.
Cooper noted that the current characteristics of the roughly 200 human cases of H5N1 to date show “a meaningful similarity to the severe 1918 flu virus.”
The cases appear to have the highest death rates among 15-to-40 year olds, rather than the very old or very young.
“This results from a cytokine storm, where the immune system not only attacks the virus, but in the process, damages lung, brain and other tissue,” Cooper wrote.
“If there were a cytokine storm, as in 1918, pregnant women and 15-to-40 year olds would be proportionately the hardest hit.”
That would have a lasting impact on demographics and economic activity around the world.
“Birth rates would plunge and the average age of the population would increase significantly,” Cooper said.
There would be sustained labour shortages, and demand for housing, cars, electronics and other durable goods would drop, she added.
“Consumption growth, in general, would be slower and government and private pension plans would risk a fairly rapid insolvency.”
While the effects of a possible pandemic remain largely theoretical, Cooper noted that poultry producers are already suffering.
“Even though avian flu is spreading rapidly in the bird population, it is still extremely difficult for humans to become infected,” Cooper wrote. Human infection usually comes from direct exposure to sick or dead birds.
“People cannot contract H5N1 by eating fully cooked chicken and poultry products. Nevertheless, poultry demand has fallen sharply in Europe,” Cooper wrote.
Effects will begin to be felt by poultry-feed growers, poultry processors, grocers and restaurants, she said, especially those specializing in chicken — including KFC, Swiss Chalet, St. Hubert, Church’s and Kenny Rogers Roasters.
“The Canadian poultry industry is, in general, little dependent on exports or imports, but new provincial rules forcing the confinement of birds make the practice of free-range raising more difficult,” Cooper said.
She added that the three largest poultry companies in Canada are Lilydale Poultry Co-op, Maple Leaf Poultry (TSX: MFI), and Maple Lodge Poultry.

The Toronto Star 

Thousands of birds struck down by bird flu in southern Russia

ROSTOV-ON-DON, March 15 (RIA Novosti, Sergei Rudkovsky) – 20,000 birds died of bird flu in the last 24 hours in Krasnodar Territory in southern Russia, the regional emergencies center said Wednesday.

“In the last 24 hours, 19,799 chickens have died in Krasnodar Territory, bringing the total number of dead birds to 328,376,” the press service said.

A further 5,690 birds were culled in the Russian Caucasus republic of Daghestan to localize an outbreak of the lethal virus.

The Emergency Situations Center in the south said that since March 13, when vaccination of birds against the virus started, some 300,000 birds have been inoculated in Krasnodar Territory, along with 465,000 in Daghestan and 21,500 in the Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkariya. 30,000 birds have been vaccinated in the republic of Kalmykia in southern European Russia since March 14, and 300,000 in Stavropol Territory since March 11.

Russia’s southern regions are particularly at risk from bird flu, as they are a major stopover for migrating birds. This year’s spring hunt in the south of the country will likely be cancelled as part of efforts to restrict the spread of the lethal virus.

No human deaths from bird flu have so far been reported in the country.

RIA Novosti

Stray dog dies of bird flu type A in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan’s government commission for preventing a bird flu epidemic said Wednesday that a type A strain of the avian flu virus had been detected in a stray dog found dead in the country’s capital Baku a week ago.The commission also reported a substantial decline in the number of bird flu cases in poultry and fowl due to the departure of migratory birds from Azerbaijan.

Earlier this month, the republic’s Health Ministry reported three human victims of the lethal H5N1 sub-strain.

RIA Novosti 

Roche to Detail Tamiflu Plans as Bird Flu Fight Shifts Focus

Roche to Detail Tamiflu Plans as Bird Flu Fight Shifts Focus March 15 (Bloomberg) — Roche Holding AG, the Swiss maker of Tamiflu, is stepping up production and testing of the potential avian flu treatment as global health experts push a new strategy to fight the growing threat of a deadly pandemic.

Health officials worldwide are focusing on a “rapid response and containment” policy, which they hope will stop any outbreak in humans, Keiji Fukuda, coordinator of the Global Influenza Program, said at a press conference last week.

“The basic idea of this strategy is to try to identify when we first see a pandemic virus emerge that is new and can pass easily from person to person and then to try to contain it,” he said. “Basically, to try to stop a pandemic before it can expand and become a pandemic.”

Groups such as the World Health Organization first focused on trying to control the H5N1 disease in animals and then on urging “pandemic preparedness,” Fukuda said. Medicines such as Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Relenza may slow the spread of the disease, which has killed at least 98 of 177 people infected since late 2003, when used quickly after an outbreak is detected.

Roche will give more details tomorrow on production plans and partners and on a research collaboration initiative on H5N1, Roche spokeswoman Martina Rupp said. The meeting follows last week’s three-day session in Geneva on the WHO’s new strategy.

Roche, which sold 1.6 billion Swiss francs ($1.23 billion) worth of Tamiflu last year, is trying to increase access to the drug to ease political pressure to give up the treatment’s patents so more can be made in case of an avian influenza outbreak. Roche has donated more than 5 million doses of the medicine to the World Health Organization.

Production Doubled

Roche doubled its own production capacity for Tamiflu in 2004 and 2005 and will be able to produce more than 300 million doses a year by 2007. Roche said it has established “close relationships” with 50 suppliers. Roche said in December it will let India’s Hetero Drugs Ltd. and China-based Shanghai Pharmaceuticals make the medicine.

The rate of infections in humans has increased this year as the virus spread to more parts of Asia, and to Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

The virus has infected an average of three people a week this year, killing an average of two a week. Last year, 23 cases, including 14 fatalities, were reported in the first 10 weeks.

SARS, Models

Fukuda cites local success in containing an outbreak of H5N1 in Hong Kong in 1997 and the ability to contain the outbreak of the SARS virus as some of the reasons flu coordinators decided to try the new approach.

Research suggesting that use of medications that could slow the spread of disease was another incentive for pursuing a strategy of containment, Fukuda said,

“If it is possible to try and stop the pandemic, there’s simply no reason not to do that,” he said. “That was really the final thing which pushed us ahead to go ahead with this project.”

Tamiflu, which has been approved to treat seasonal flu, has been shown in laboratory and animal experiments to fight the H5N1 avian influenza. Studies published in the journals Science and Nature last year suggested that an international stockpile of 100,000 to 3 million doses of the medicine might help halt a human outbreak of bird flu in Asia.

In the models, outbreaks were most controllable by Tamiflu and isolation measures when the average infected person was likely to infect fewer than 1.6 to 1.8 other people, according to studies carried out at Imperial College London and Emory University in Atlanta.

Never Attempted

“This has never been attempted before,” Fukuda said. “There is a very good chance that we will fail and that we will not be able to stop it.”

In a case where one infected person only sickened an average of 1.4 others, the strategy might work if begun as long as 21 days after an outbreak. A virus that spread more quickly might have to be detected in as few as two days to be quelled by drugs, the researchers said.

Roche is trying to increase production of the medicine to ensure that it can supply all that’s needed. The company has been looking for possible production partners and has received more than 200 requests from third parties interested in making Tamiflu under license, Rupp said.

The flu coordinators are working on finalizing their draft version of the containment plan and will post it on the WHO’s Web site at the end of this week, Fukuda said. The organizers will then seek public comment, he said.

Any slowing of the pandemic’s spread may mean that more vaccine can be produced and get to more people, he said.

“Slowing a pandemic as well as building an infrastructure for the future are really important reasons for going ahead even if we don’t succeed in ultimately stopping the emergence of this virus,” he said.

bloomberg

H5N1:The Avian Flu Pandemic

Bird Flu Deaths Reported in Azerbaijan

At least three people were suspected of having died from the avian flu virus in Azerbaijan, the country’s health minister said.Blood from the victims was to be analyzed with the help of western laboratory techniques, after local tests failed to detect any sign of the strain, the minister said on Monday. Later, local officials said the tests had confirmed that three people were killed by bird flu.

In Azerbaijan, the H5N1 strain of the virus was first detected in February in migratory birds that turned up dead.

Azerbaijan lies to the east of Turkey, where four children died of the virus in January.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed or forced the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003, and recently spread to Europe, Africa and the Middle East, The Associated Press reported.

It also has killed at least 98 people in Asia and Turkey since 2003, according to the World Health Organization’s latest tally posted on its Web site early Monday.

Health officials fear H5N1 could evolve into a virus that can be transmitted easily between people and become a global pandemic. So far, human cases generally have been traced to direct contact with sick birds.

MOSNEWS.com:Bird Flu Deaths Reported in Azerbaijan _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Two more cases of H5N1 bird flu confirmed in Switzerland

A British laboratory has confirmed that two more water birds have died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Switzerland, bring to three the total for the country, the Swiss Federal Veterinary Office said today.

The newer cases were in a coot and a scaup duck found earlier this month in northern Switzerland.

The first case to be confirmed was a merganser found along the lakefront in Geneva last month.

Swiss authorities assume that eight other birds that tested positively for H5 bird flu also have the deadly H5N1 strain, but results from the confirmation tests in England are still pending.

Swiss authorities have so far tested 468 dead birds for the virus.

Ireland On-Line:Two more cases of H5N1 bird flu confirmed in Switzerland ______________________________________________________________________________________________________

H5N1 bird flu detected in Myanmar

The resident office of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Monday it has received official report from the Myanmar authorities that H5N1 bird flu was detected among 400 dead chickens in Mandalay, northern Myanmar.

The Myanmar authorities said the chickens were found dead on March 8 in Mandalay and the H5N1 virus was detected among them when examination was made and the sample of the test has been sent to the international bird flu examination center for further confirmation.

This is the first time that Myanmar has detected the avian influenza virus.

People’s Daily Online:

H5N1 bird flu detected in Myanmar

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Cameroon Reports Deadly Strain of Bird Flu

Cameroon has become the fourth African country to report a case of the deadly bird flu virus.A government statement released Sunday said the H5N1 strain was detected at a duck farm in the northern town of Maroua.

Cameroon had already implemented a ban on importing birds after the H5N1 virus was reported in neighboring Nigeria.

Health officials are concerned that Africa is not prepared to combat