August 2, 2006

Thailand may jail farmers who fail to report bird flu
 

Thai bird owners who fail to notify authorities of mortalities within 12 hours face up to two months in jail and fines of as much as 4,000 baht (US$106), Agriculture Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said in a statement yesterday. (Aug 2).

Provinces bordering Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar were ordered to ban poultry from those countries and violators could face up to two years in jail and a 4,000 baht fine, the ministry said.

The strict rules should resolve the problem of non-reporting of bird flu cases, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said.

Thailand's main obstacle in dealing with the bird flu problem was that poultry owners are reluctant to report deaths.

Thailand raised 260 million chickens last year, according to the FAO. Outbreaks of H5N1 in 2004 forced the culling of 29 million fowl.

The health and agriculture ministries are sending officials and volunteers to villages to monitor mass poultry deaths nationwide. Officials are on alert to cull fowl and spray disinfectant as soon as reports of poultry deaths surface.

The government is trying to control outbreaks before the peak tourist season in November. Tourism, which contributes about 7.5 percent of GDP, is expected to stimulate slowing growth.

Meanwhile, bird flu has also spread to two more poultry farms in the Laotian capital, Vientiane. About 19,000 birds were culled and sales of poultry meat at markets and restaurants were temporarily banned. 

It's not yet known whether the outbreaks in Thailand and Laos are a result of circulation of the virus in backyard farms, or a reintroduction from outside, Laurence Gleeson, regional manager of the FAO's Emergency Center for the Control of Transboundary Animal Diseases in Bangkok, said, adding there is considerable border movement and trade between the two countries.

Meanwhile, a joint group of experts from the FAO and the World Organization for Animal Health said they would systematically make genetic sequence information accessible to the entire scientific community. Information would be sent to the National Institute for Health for sequencing and deposited on the free- access database, GenBank.