Scotland: BF restrictions will stay in place

    Bird flu restrictions will stay in place, says executive

ALAN MACDERMID April 14 2006

The bird flu protection order confining three million domestic birds to their quarters will run its 30-day course and expire unless there is fresh cause for concern, the Scottish Executive said yesterday.
The "wild bird risk area" spanning 2500 square kilometres - from the Forth Road Bridge west to Perth, and from Dundee north to Stonehaven - was put in force on April 6 after a swan found dead in Cellardyke, Fife, was found to have the deadly H5N1 strain of Avian flu.
The order will stay in force until May 6.
Genetic fingerprinting established that the bird was a whooper swan, and that the virus was similar to that isolated on the German island of Ruegen, indicating that the bird was a migrant from that area.
Within the at-risk zone, farmers were instructed to house birds indoors. If this was not possible, they would be expected to put in place measures to separate their birds from wild birds. Monitoring of wild birds has also been intensified.
Fife Council said it was business as usual for visitors to the countryside and beaches over Easter.
Another four cases of H5N1 bird flu have been confirmed in the Czech Republic.
A laboratory in Prague found the deadly strain in four dead swans found in the south of the country.
Another four swans found in the same region tested positive for the H5 subtype of the virus, and further tests will be conducted to determine whether they had the H5N1 strain, Duben said.
A total of seven cases of the H5N1 virus have been confirmed so far in the Czech Republic.
Bird flu fears have even spread to Key West in Florida, where roaming chickens are something of a tourist attraction.
City Commissioner Bill Verge wants the city to begin rounding up the island's 2000 to 3000 chickens.
But some chicken lovers are dismissing the danger.
Katha Sheehan likened a Key West without its chickens to "New Orleans without the jazz and San Francisco without the cable cars".
Key West's chicken history goes back to the mid-1800s, when birds were kept for food and ****fights. Over the years, the chickens were released or escaped, and the population grew on the island.
Some residents complained and the city hired a chicken catcher, but other residents sabotaged the effort by breaking traps and feeding the birds.
More than 100 deaths have been blamed on the avian flu virus around the world, none of them in the Americas.

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