5% of mailed birds are 'still out there'

Nearly all of an estimated 1,000 young ducks and geese that entered Utah recently by mail from Montana have been recovered and are being put down this week by state officials concerned about the potential health threat to humans and animals.

However, some of the mailed birds are still missing. "There's probably 5 percent still out there," said Larry Lewis, public information officer for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.

Lewis said Thursday that a seller in Montana tried to mail the birds in overstuffed boxes by plane to a buyer in Kansas sometime over the past week.

"The boxes were old and used and leaking fecal matter," he said. "The air carrier said, 'We're not moving these anymore.' "

Lewis said it's common practice for commercial fowl to be distributed by mail, and it's not unusual that they would travel by plane.

He added that the original owner of the birds had not certified them by a veterinarian to be free of disease and did not want them returned. Because the original owner was shipping the birds out of Montana, the only requirement would have been to seek the proper health certification for the birds in Kansas.

"There's nothing here we can go after this person for," said Sherry Rust, executive assistant for the Montana Board of Livestock.

The owner, she added, probably had no idea the birds would be held over in Utah on their way to Kansas. In Utah, state officials require a clean bill of health to accompany out-of-state shipments of livestock, including fowl.

The concern in this type of case, Lewis said, is over H5N1 avian influenza, which federal officials have said could enter the United States this year.

The so-called bird flu has been transmitted to humans overseas and is being blamed for 130 deaths in 10 countries, with 81 of those deaths in Vietnam and Indonesia, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO reported that as of June 20, an additional 98 cases have been laboratory-confirmed in those 10 countries, but those cases had not resulted in death.

The United States has a "heightened" alert over the threat of avian flu to wildlife, private poultry businesses and humans, although no confirmed cases in any of those categories have been reported.

Because the Montana birds were not certified in Utah as safe, 95 percent were confiscated at the airport by state officials. Lewis said a "humane" method was being used to destroy the birds.

But where the remaining 5 percent of the birds went, exactly who distributed them or under what authority the distributor acted is unknown, according to Lewis.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of the birds is being asked to call 801-538-7100.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com