June 1, 2006

 

Scientists suspect wild animal trade spreading bird flu

 

 

While records are available for legal trades of animals, there is also the illegal ones to be worried about, William Karesh, director of the field veterinary programme at the Wildlife Conservation Society said at a bird flu conference in Rome.

 

Estimates put the number of animals transported as pets or for other purposes at 350 million a year.

 

About one-quarter of this trade is thought to be illegal and escapes detection. Disease outbreaks resulting from wildlife trade have caused massive economic damage globally, Karesh said.

 

Wild fowl in the pet or exotic bird trade may carry viruses that become dangerous when introduced to new areas or to new host species.

 

Strains of both the bird flu and Newcastle's disease have been found in internationally traded wild birds.

 

Decreasing contact between humans and birds may be a better way of handling the problem than trying to eliminate the virus or the wild species that carries them, Karesh said.

 

Focusing efforts at markets to regulate and reduce the trade in wildlife may serve as a way to decrease the risks in disease for humans, Karesh said.

 

More work needs to be done to study the presence of the H5N1 virus in wild birds, scientists at the conference said.

 

The FAO and its partner researchers have not been able to find an instance of the virus in wild birds collected in Africa and parts of Europe.

 

Although the bird flu virus was found in about 3 percent of the samples collected, they were low-pathogenic strains that do not cause severe disease.

 

Still, some experts criticise the traditional way researchers try to detect bird flu through the birds' feces. However, bird flu is found traditionally in the respiratory tract, which meant researchers could have been looking at the disease from a wrong approach.