November 7, 2005

 

Mexico tightens bird flu controls at borders and farms

 

 

Mexican sanitation authorities have tightened control at all sea, air and land borders in order to prevent any high-pathogenic strain of bird flu from entering the country, the Agriculture Ministry said Thursday.

 

The sanitation authorities, in close cooperation with the Agriculture Ministry as well as farming and health institutions, have also enhanced "epidemiological vigilance programs" across Mexico's 32 states and the federal district.

 

The ministry said last month that Mexico remains "completely free" of the high-pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu that has led to more than 60 deaths to people across Southeast Asia and recently has been found in Eastern Europe.

 

"Mexico now has established an epidemiological vigilance program in all 32 states of the country in order to protect its poultry industry, which in cycles of every 45 days, produces an average of 260 million birds," the ministry said in a report, a copy of which was sent to Dow Jones Newswires.

 

The report said inspectors from the ministry's sanitation agency, Senasica, regularly made visits to all of Mexico's 3,860 commercial poultry farms to ensure that any signs of a potential outbreak would be caught before developing.

 

The report also said farms are in a state of "permanent alert" and that Senasica on a daily basis is monitoring all farming and processing activities in the commercial farms through "strict supervision" of chicken and egg production.

 

Bird flu comes in a variety of forms, including low-pathogenic strains and high-pathogenic strains, such as H5N1.

 

Mexico's sanitary authorities earlier this year detected low-pathogenic bird flu in 34 commercial poultry farms in central Querretaro while a single case of low-pathogenic bird flu was discovered in the northern Mexican state of Durango.

 

In both incidents, local sanitary-control agents swiftly killed the infected animals and managed to bring the outbreak under control, the Agriculture Ministry said in a report at the time.

 

Low-pathogenic strain of bird flu does not adversely affect humans but can devastate flocks, according to industry officials.

 

In the latest report, the Agriculture Ministry said it was precisely rigid controls at the farming level, processing facilities and at border crossings that have enabled Mexico to stay free of high-pathogenic bird flu.

 

"The agents from Senasica are making permanent, regular visits to all the commercial farms, as well as to individual small producers raising chickens and eggs on a small scale as a family farm unit," said an official at the ministry.

 

"The control really has always been in place, and we have never allowed any relaxation of this, but the monitoring is more strict now, and thanks to this we have been able to make the country stay free of the problem of bird flu," the spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires.

 

He said some concern remains about migratory birds in southern Mexico, which is home to hundreds of species of birds that migrate in the thousands every year from northern Canada through Mexico's Chiapas state to the Amazons in Brazil and back.

 

To date there had not been any signs the migratory birds passing through Mexico have been exposed to any strains of bird flu.