Officials Address Bird Flu Worries

An outbreak of bird flu at a Delaware farm was an isolated case and involves a strain of the disease that is less dangerous than the one that has ravaged flocks and killed humans in Asia, state officials said Monday.

Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore halted U.S. poultry imports over the weekend after Delaware ordered the slaughter of about 12,000 infected chickens on a Kent County farm. The birds were killed Saturday and the farm has been quarantined, the state said.

“There is no indication at this point that avian influenza has infected any poultry flock besides the one eliminated on Saturday,” Gov. Ruth Ann Minner said at a news conference in Dover. She also stressed that the strain found in Delaware is not harmful to humans.

The virus found in the state is the H7 strain, said Anne Fitzgerald, a spokeswoman for the Delaware Department of Agriculture. The strain, found last year in Connecticut and Rhode Island, is less virulent than the H5N1 variety that killed at least 18 people and prompted the destruction of 100 million birds in Asia.

Bans in those two states may be lifted upon a U.S. request, said Hirofumi Kugita, director of the international animal health affairs office at Japan’s Agriculture Ministry.

Japan said it may limit its ban on U.S. poultry to imports from Delaware because the strain of the bird flu that’s been found there may be less harmful than the variety ravaging Asia. Hong Kong, which stopped short of a ban on all U.S. poultry, suspended imports of live birds and chicken meat from Delaware.

A California Farm Bureau Federation spokesman said the export ban by Japan and other Asian countries wasn’t a significant concern to California poultry farmers. Strong domestic demand, in part fueled by low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets, have created a strong market for chicken and eggs.

According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the state’s farmers sold $452.3 million of chickens in 2002, the latest year for which statistics are available. Exports, however, accounted for only 1% of those sales.

Delaware was the seventh-largest producer of broilers in 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, producing about 3.5% of the nation’s chicken. The largest producers were Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, North Carolina, Mississippi and Texas.

Delaware, which produced almost 280 million birds in 2003 valued at about $500 million, tested chickens at 12 farms within a two-mile radius of the infected flock. State officials said all tests so far are negative. Results were not available for one chicken house on one of the 12 farms, they said.