Canada orders cull of 60,000 birds

OTTAWA, Nov. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Sunday ordered the precautionary killing of about 60,000 birds at a commercial farm in the province of British Columbia where a H5 strain of bird flu was found.

Tests have confirmed the duck from a commercial farm in Chilliwack in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver, has a non-lethal strain of avian flu, CFIA's veterinarian Cornelius Kiley told reporters at the town on Sunday.

Initial tests last week found a H5-type strain in the duck during routine tests. The CFIA immediately quarantined the farm which houses about 60,000 ducks and geese.

The federal agency is expanding the quarantine from one farm to50, and four farms within a five-kilometer radius of the affected farm are under special surveillance, Kiley said.

He said there was no indication the virus has spread beyond thefarm, which was also subject to an avian flu poultry cull last year, adding all indications are that the virus is not a "particularly nasty strain."

More testing will be done at the National Center for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg to confirm which strain was found.

On Saturday, the CFIA said two wild ducks in Manitoba have tested positive for H5N1 viruses, but not the dangerous strain that has spread from birds to people in Southeast Asia.

Officials called the viruses "low pathogenic," meaning they arenot viewed as a public health threat.

The viruses were isolated as part of a cross-country surveillance program to find what avian flu viruses are being carried by wild ducks in Canada. A H5N3 subtype was also isolated in two birds from the province of Quebec. Enditem

source: www.chinaview.cn