Bird flu epidemic becoming critical…(If This Jumps To The Swine…Off To The Races!!)
Julie Belschner
AgReview.com
April 28, 2015
Wisconsin’s poultry farms are under a state of emergency, declared this past week by Gov. Scott Walker. National Guard forces are helping as avian flu spreads. As of late Tuesday, yet another Wisconsin turkey flock had been decimated with the H5 avian influenza virus – an 87,000-bird turkey flock in Chippewa County. As of that date, there were four known cases of the virus in Wisconsin, according to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. The latest count shows more than 7 million poultry affected across the Midwest, with numerous farms added to the list each day. Iowa has destroyed millions of chickens, and Minnesota, which has also declared a state of emergency, has also destroyed millions of birds. Sunday, the Minnesota National Guard was called up in an attempt to contain the epidemic.
Meanwhile the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is scrambling to study the family of viruses to determine if a spread to humans is likely. Poultry workers are now being tested for the virus, and the CDC is recommending disinfecting all property and persons who have been around poultry. While transmission of avian flu from birds to humans has been rare in the United States, it has happened in Asia and Africa. The current strains are highly pathogenic strains of bird flu, meaning they are deadly to birds – and could possibly affect humans.
“It is possible that the process of genetic re-assortment could occur in a person who is co-infected with an avian influenza A virus and a human influenza A virus,” according to the CDC. “The genetic information in these viruses could re-assort to create a new influenza A virus with a gene from the avian virus and other genes from the human virus. Influenza A viruses with (the avian virus gene) against which humans have little or no immunity that have re-assorted with a human influenza virus are more likely to result in sustained human-to-human transmission and pose a major public-health threat of pandemic influenza. Therefore, careful evaluation of influenza A viruses recovered from humans who are infected with avian influenza A viruses is very important to identify re-assortment if it occurs.
The Rest…HERE
