November 22, 2005

 

US bans poultry from Canadian province after bird flu

 

 

The US government has placed an interim ban on British Columbia's poultry after a case of bird flu was found on a farm in the Fraser Valley, the Canadian Press (CP) reported Monday.

 

Canada's chief veterinary officer Dr Brian Evans says he received a letter from the US saying they are restricting imports of poultry products from the British Colombia mainland until they get a full assessment of the situation in the 5-kilometre area around the farm affected by avian flu.

 

Taiwan and Japan have indicated they will take similar action.

 

Evans says under such circumstances, countries could ban poultry products from the entire country, a distinct region, such as a province, or focus in on an even more tightly affected zone, the CP reported.

 

The US has gone for the middle option.

 

If the investigation shows the 5-kilometre zone is free of virus, Evans believes the Americans would be open to scaling back the import ban to cover just that zone, not the entire mainland, the CP said.

 

Officials announced Friday they had found a case of H5 bird flu in a duck at a commercial farm in nearby Chilliwack.

 

Evans said the US is now awaiting further information from Canada.

 

"Their initial approach at this point in time is to have interim restrictions that are limited just to the mainland of British Columbia pending further efforts on our part to provide additional information," Evans said.

 

"We are continuing to work with them to have them revise their restriction to what we have offered the rest of the world, which is simply a withdrawal of certification (of disease-free status) from all farms within that 5-kilometre surveillance zone."

 

Evans said the federal government would have preferred that the US take no action since the virus found in the duck is a low pathogenic variety.

 

"Certainly that would have been our preference," he added. "That would have been consistent with how we've treated low path findings in the United States previously. But again, we're working in an extremely sensitive international environment at this point."