Homestead mailing list

[clhw AT InfoAve.Net (clhw)]

In at least one of those cases, the reports cause was bad feed.
I'm not sure a cause was given for the other one in the US.
But I did see in at least one of the stories, that bird flu was being
tested for.
As you, Bev, are probably well aware, there are numerous strains of bird
flu. H5N1 is the one which people are thinking may go pandemic if it
crosses the species barrier to humans.

A friend of mine used to be in the bird business until he was run into and
turned into a quadripeligic this past spring. He raised quail, pheasant and
chukkar. About 2 years ago, he had most of mid-central North Carolina
producers mad at him because some of his birds tested positive for one of
the other strains. There was an embargo on poultry shipping from NC, which
was started before his birds were positive. It cost the industry a lot of
money. I don't believe the eradications of flocks were as strong as in the
Scandanavian countries and in Asia, but some were eliminated.

A second testing proved that his flocks were free but it was a real concern
for his sister, my good friend. They could see losing thousands of birds
and a major source of income for their farm.

more below

>
>You're not disagreeing...I got the alert on that, the first one on bird
>flu in a LONG time, and it was that alert that made me realize how long
>it had been since I had seen a bird flu story, especially since during
>the last few weeks, there have been multiple stories of birds dying in
>places like Texas and Australia, but there had been nary a mention of
>H5N1 in those stories.
>
>> There was a line in the story something to the effect of "after
>> several months of no activity...." indicating there had been no cases
>> to report on in a while....
>
>Yeah, I saw that...they also mentioned their vaccination program, which
>has made it harder to track the virus in home flocks.  An interesting
>sidenote, IMO, to give thought to livestock vaccination programs in
>general, here in the US in this day and age of the NAIS threat.

This is also a problem with humans. In Europe, especially the former Soviet
Union, a preventative vaccination called BCG (I hope that is right and not
the initials for some cow-y thing) is frequently given to people in areas
where TB is prevalent.

We saw one Russian refugee have a massive reaction to the TB skin test at a
health department here. He could have lost his arm if the reaction had
gotten worse. That was when I started translating health records from there
and discovered the BCG.

Our regional health department head knew enough to ask me if I saw that and
I found it. The local people knew nothing about BCG and just assumed they
had a full-blown terrible case. When I was able to show them the BCG
listed, they stopped the whole show they were putting place to treat,
medications which are hard on people's livers. All future Soviet refugees
were asked if they had been given BCG before any skin testing was done.

So vaccination programs can really mess up testing programs, assessment of
actual danger and how wide-spread a disease (in animals, too) is, and
treatment protocol.

>Absolutely right.  I've read several stories over the years how some
>authorities think China and other Asian nations are underreporting.
>
>Bev

I used to read the Pro-Med reports, which are supervised by physicians;
they made statements which would agree with you. It was interesting how
lop-sided the reporting was that was done. Some of the black holes were
because of poverty and lack of medical infrastructure; others were
political.
Lynn