Dead Parrot at Center of British Avian Flu Mystery
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Mystery continues to surround the death of a South American parrot from the H5N1 avian-flu strain in a quarantine facility near London.
A spokesman for the British environment ministry said today it’s still unclear how a parrot imported from Suriname, in South America, died from the H5N1 avian-flu strain. There have been no reports of the H5N1 strain in South America.
The ministry’s “working hypothesis” is that the parrot became infected while it was in a quarantine facility in Chelmsford, northeast of London, the ministry’s chief veterinarian, Debby Reynolds, Ph.D., said earlier in a statement.
The probable source, Dr. Reynolds said, is birds imported from Taiwan that shared the same airspace in the quarantine facility.
Taiwanese officials were quoted today as saying that the British government had already ruled out the birds from Taiwan, but the environment ministry spokesman said the matter is still under investigation.
It’s also unclear how many birds from South America were infected; samples from two birds were pooled, leaving authorities unable to say for certain whether they both carried the virus, Dr. Reynolds said.
Dr. Reynolds also said the practice of mingling birds from different parts of the world in the same quarantine area will be reviewed. There are about 2,000 imported birds under 30-day quarantine in Britain. The environment ministry said none will be released until after a case-by-case assessment.
Britain is officially free of avian flu and the current uproar doesn’t change that status, Dr. Reynolds said. However, other parts of Europe have already seen avian flu in both wild birds and poultry.
The latest area hit is Croatia, which late last week reported that the virus had been found in dead swans.
British authorities said they had not seen the parrot’s H5N1 strain before, but the closest match on file was found in ducks from China earlier this year.
The European Commission, urged by British and German politicians, will consider a ban on importing wild birds throughout the European Union.
Birds imported into the U.S. are subject to a 30-day quarantine at one of three centers (New York, Miami, and Los Angeles) and live poultry can’t be imported at all from 13 countries with avian flu outbreaks, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In other developments:
- The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said today it will send a crisis team to Indonesia, one of the countries hardest hit by the H5N1 virus. The team will “kick-start virus control activities,” said Joseph Domenech, FAO’s chief veterinary officer.
- Health ministers and senior health officials from about 30 countries and agencies such as the World Health Organization arrived in Ottawa for a meeting to discuss planning for a possible flu pandemic. The two-day meeting in the Canadian capital is expected to discuss such things as disease surveillance, vaccine production, and risk assessment.
Inevitably the dead parrot in London dredged up memories the extinct Norwegian Blue famously purchased by actor John Cleese in a classic Monty Python television skit a generation ago.
In the television sketch, actor Cleese, having found that his newly purchased parrot is dead, tries to return it to the shifty pet shop owner, who insists the bird is simply “pinin’ for the fjords.”
Cleese replies: ” ‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more!...‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!”
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