An eagle eye on health of poultry

On the wings of a migrating duck or goose, deadly bird flu might eventually find its way to Utah. That's why state officials will be keeping a watchful eye on wild birds and on the state's 6 million turkeys and 5 million egg-laying hens.

In Asia it has been through contact with live poultry that avian flu has been transmitted to humans.

Last winter, the Utah Agriculture Department's avian influenza committee came up with a surveillance, prevention and emergency plan, and the department will soon be asking the state's turkey and table egg producers to sign voluntary contracts that would standardize procedures, says state veterinarian Dr. Mike Marshall. Should a quarantine of poultry farms be necessary, state law mandates compliance.

De-population — the industry's term for the killing of diseased birds — and disinfection would follow if the virus turned out to be the highly pathogenic ("high-path") flu virus H5N1 that has authorities worldwide concerned.

So far, there has been no confirmation of H5N1 in any wild or domestic birds in the United States, although bird flu has now been found in birds in Croatia, Romania, Greece, Turkey and Russia. The virus would have to mutate in order to be spread from person to person.

Biologists in Alaska and Canada say migrating birds, particularly waterfowl, could bring H5N1 to North America by next year — but probably not this fall, Christopher Brand, chief of field and lab research for the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center, told The Associated Press.

Scientists from several agencies have been monitoring large flocks in the northern part of the North American continent since last summer, collecting both live birds and thousands of samples from bird droppings. The results of those tests are pending, but so far scientists have not found the virus. A consortium of government agencies in the United States is seeking $5 million over the next three years to test birds along their migratory routes, beginning next spring.

Bird flu can pass from wild birds to domestic poultry and vice versa, spread through feces and saliva. The deadly version of the flu was observed spreading from poultry to wild birds in nesting grounds in Siberia last summer. Most of these birds are now migrating south to India and Bangladesh. Others follow southwestern flyways to the eastern Mediterranean and Africa.