China bird flu spreads, U.N. seeks facts

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – A bird flu outbreak in China’s
northeast has spread, state media said on Wednesday, prompting
worried consumers to avoid poultry and world health bodies to
seek more information from Beijing on the deadly virus.

An outbreak in Liaoning province first announced last week
had spread to another three townships, making it more difficult
to control the spread of the virus, Xinhua news agency said. It
is China’s fourth outbreak in a month.

The United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization
(FAO) said it would send a letter with the World Health
Organization to China’s health and agriculture ministries
asking for more information on the Liaoning case and offering
help.

“In general we are fairly concerned because we feel the
more outbreaks, the more the risk of a pandemic,” said
Noureddin Mona, the FAO’s China representative.

“The frequency of outbreaks is a reflection of the lack of
a surveillance system.”

China has yet to report any human cases of bird flu, which
has killed 64 people in Asia since 2003 — 42 in Vietnam, 13 in
Thailand, five in Indonesia and four in Cambodia.

But the World Health Organization is to help probe a
possible human case in southern China.

So far H5N1 has not shown it can spread easily among people
and essentially remains a disease in birds. To try to control
the latest outbreak, 6 million birds have been slaughtered in
Liaoning.

MASKS AND BODY SUITS

Xinhua showed pictures of some of the 3,500 paramilitary
police sent to Liaoning wearing masks and blue body suits
stuffing chickens into bags, which are then dumped into pits,
burned, covered in disinfectant and buried.

The government is rushing more vaccines to the area and the
agriculture ministry has reminded farmers only to use vaccines
from nine authorized drug makers.

Fake vaccines had been sold in Liaoning, the China Daily
newspaper said, which could be dangerous to birds and humans if
they contained active viruses.

“The harm is incalculable,” the China Daily report quoted
chief veterinarian Jia Youling as saying.

To stop the spread of the Liaoning bird flu, the
agriculture ministry was also strengthening its cordon around
the outbreak area, Xinhua said, though this could be hard to
enforce as the province is on a major track for migratory
birds.

Although there is no evidence properly cooked chicken is a
source of infection, consumers in China are shunning poultry.

The price of chicks in China has dropped up to 90 percent
in some areas and supermarkets have slashed purchases of
chickens and ducks, China Daily said.

The newspaper added Beijing-based supermarket chain Wumart
had halved the number of chickens and ducks it buys in the past
two weeks, while top poultry and feed producer Shandong Liuhe
Group incurred a loss of 4 million yuan in October.

Shenzhen-listed Inner Mongolia Prairie Xingfa said in a
statement on Wednesday that falling demand had forced it to
stop raising chickens and to close processing lines.

Fears of bird flu have also hit the market for soymeal, one
of the main components of poultry feed.

Chinese buyers have canceled at least four contracts to
import Indian soymeal on growing fears bird flu could sharply
cut commercial feed demand, Singapore traders said.