“Dead Swans in UK?..probably find H5N1"

POCOMOKE CITY, Md. (AP)--The first case of avian flu in Maryland was found Saturday on a commercial chicken farm on the state's Eastern Shore, the U.S. agriculture department said.

It was the same strain found last month in two flocks in Delaware, but officials said, "there is no known connection between the Maryland and Delaware cases."

The H7 strain was found among samples sent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's veterinary lab in Iowa from the Delaware laboratory testing chickens from farms in the Delmarva area.

The samples came from a Pokomoke City farm with four poultry houses and about 118,000 6-week-old broiler chickens. Officials quarantined the farm Friday evening, Maryland Agriculture Secretary Lewis R. Riley said in a news release. The birds would be destroyed Sunday morning and their remains kept on the farm in the chicken houses where they are killed.
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Officials said 210,000 chickens on another farm about a mile from the Pocomoke City facility and under the same ownership also would be destroyed "because of the close relationship between these farms and the shared personnel and equipment."

But they said they would keep under observation some one-week-old birds on a third farm owned by the same farmer about two miles from the original farm.

Additionally, the state agriculture department quarantined 71 farms in a six-mile radius of the infected farm. All of those will be tested for avian flu, and officials said testing would continue across the Delmarva peninsula until at least March 16.

Poultry in Maryland accounted for 31% of the state's agriculture industry in 2002. That amounted to $441 million of the state's $1.4 billion agriculture industry that year.

There are approximately 1,100 poultry farms on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

The state's last outbreak of avian flu was in 1993 among game birds on a Queen Anne's County farm.

Officials have tested birds on 828 farms in Maryland, Virginia and Delaware since the disease was discovered on two Delaware farms. All of them tested negative for avian flu.

One of the Delaware farms, where 12,000 birds were destroyed in the latest incident, belongs to an independent grower in Kent County who supplies the live bird market in New York City. The other, where about 75,000 birds were killed, belongs to a commercial grower for Perdue Farms in Sussex County.

The disease has prompted an unprecedented poultry health testing program on the Delmarva peninsula, and industry representatives and state agriculture officials are developing new regulations to prevent the spread of poultry diseases. The disease has the potential to ravage the Delmarva peninsula's $1.5 billion poultry industry.

Officials believe the flu virus may have been brought back to Delaware on crates or trucks from the New York City live market, where the mingling of vendors, consumers and live birds shedding feathers and manure enhances the risk of disease transmission.

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The case in Maryland is H7...not sure what the difference is (not going to humans???)

 

 

Update --

 More lake swans receive treatment

Feb 15 2006

Midweek Visiter

ALMOST a third of the swan population of Southport's Marine Lake has now been picked up following a mystery illness. Twenty-three of the swans have died and 27 are still being treated at the RSPCA Hospital in Stapley, Cheshire. RSPCA Inspector Ian Robertson said: "Two more were picked up on Monday. "If you can go up to a swan and pick it up that tells you something is wrong. "The birds were very lethargic. However I think this outbreak has tailed off. We are still working closely with Swan Rescue who monitor the lake. "It has been a joint effort between us."

 

The RSPCA continues to transport any sick birds on the two hour journey to Stapley.

Mr Robertson added: "We also have to consider whether the birds are fit enough to be transported."

RSPCA officers and Defra are still conducting tests into the cause of the swan deaths.

http://icseftonandwestlancs.icnetwork.co.uk/icsouthport/news /tm_objectid=16705102%26method=full%26siteid=60252%26headlin e=more%2dlake%2dswans%2dreceive%2dtreatment%2d-name_page.htm l