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Japan Bans French Poultry over Bird Flu

Posted on: Friday, 24 February 2006, 16:00 CST

By Laure Bretton

PARIS -- Japan banned all imports of French poultry products on Friday after bird flu killed thousands of turkeys at a farm in eastern France.

Bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe this month but the deadly H5N1 virus had until now affected only wild birds. Nigeria, Egypt and India have recently reported major outbreaks in poultry.

If confirmed by tests as H5N1, the French case would mark the first time the virus had hit domestic fowl in the European Union and would deal a further blow to France's battered poultry industry, worth 6 billion euros ($7 billion) a year.

Japan did not wait for details of the virus to be confirmed, putting a temporary ban into force with immediate effect.

The ban concerns imports of poultry meat, all liver products including foie gras, and giblets, a spokesman at the Japanese embassy in Paris said. In 2005, Japan imported 1,510 tonnes of French poultry meat and 377 tonnes of giblets and foie gras.

H5N1 has accelerated its march across the globe, spreading to at least 16 more countries this month and the World Health Organization believes migratory water fowl are one of the main carriers of the virus.

The battle against the virus is being fought in Asia, Europe and Africa.

Slovenia on Friday confirmed its second case of H5N1 in a gray heron found south of the city of Maribor in the northeast of the country. A wild swan was found with H5N1 on February 16.

In the Indonesian capital Jakarta, about 600 inspectors sprayed disinfectant in bird cages and chicken coops across the city where backyard chickens are common.

Bird flu has killed at least 19 people in Indonesia, the second highest toll in the world after Vietnam, and the H5N1 virus is now present in 26 of the country's 33 provinces. Many of the human cases have been in or around the capital.

Health workers launched their own clean-up campaign in western India after the country's first outbreak of bird flu.

Fears of human infections were easing as the last of 12 people quarantined tested negative for the H5N1 strain. The others had already been cleared of having the virus.

Two more people have also been quarantined, including a veterinary worker involved in culling of chickens in Navapur town in Maharashtra state where India's first H5N1 outbreak in chickens was confirmed last week.

GET USED TO IT

Cambodia said on Friday bird flu had returned after the virus was found in dead ducks near the border with Vietnam.

Four people died of bird flu in Cambodia after it first arrived in late 2003 and its reappearance was the first in months in the region.

H5N1 has killed at least 92 people out of 170 infected since 2003 but it remains hard for people to catch. Experts fear it is only a matter of time before it changes into a form that passes easily between humans.

Health experts say the more the virus spreads and infects poultry, the greater the chances of human infections that might lead to the feared mutated strain.

Slovakia on Friday became the latest European country to confirm it had H5N1, the virus having been found in a wild falcon and a grebe, both of which died.

Two more German states, Schleswig-Holstein in the northwest and Baden Wuerttemberg in the southwest, reported bird flu cases in wild ducks.

Europe must get used to living with the virus, EU health chief Markos Kyprianou said on Friday.

"Given that the virus is everywhere now, it's a problem that will stay for some time," Kyprianou told a news conference in Vienna.

"Both us and the European public have to learn to live with this problem, without any panic. We have the measures, we have the legislation," he said.

(Reporting by Krittivas Mukherjee in Mumbai, Adeel Halim in Navapur, India, David Evansin Paris, Tomi Soetjipto in Jakarta, Boris Groendahl in Vienna)

Source: REUTERS

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