Every fall, Francis Lauzier walks the shoreline of the Richelieu River near his home in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu to see the snow geese congregate by the thousands.
Health
Highly pathogenic avian flu has disastrous consequences in Quebec
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More than 500,000 poultry farm birds in Quebec have died or been culled due to exposure to the infectious disease; some wild birds have been affected as well.
“It was very, very sad,” he said. “And eerie.”
Mary Williams had a similar experience while walking with a friend on Nov. 29 in the same region, roughly 35 kilometres southeast of Montreal.
“There were so many dead birds, it was unbelievable,” said the resident of Ste-Thérèse, an island in the Richelieu River. “We were really spooked.”
A Parks Canada employee wearing protective clothing and a specialized mask was collecting the bodies. Employees in two more trucks would join her. It’s the avian flu, she told them.
More specifically, it was the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), a deadly strain of the bird flu that is causing the “most devastating” outbreak ever in Europe and the United States, and is being seen for the first time in Quebec, with disastrous consequences.
To date, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has recorded 532,000 birds that have died or had to be culled due to exposure to the disease on 23 poultry farms in Quebec. Eleven outbreaks were still listed as “ongoing” as of Tuesday. Farms in British Columbia and Alberta have been even harder hit, suffering 2.9 million and 1.2 million deaths, respectively. More than six million birds — primarily chickens, turkeys and ducks — have been culled on commercial farms in Canada in the past 12 months, with outbreaks hitting every province except Prince Edward Island.
“This is something we’ve never had before; it’s the highest-risk strain our farmers have ever faced,” said Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, a professor at the Université de Montréal’s veterinary school who specializes in the control of infectious diseases. “Worldwide, it’s a pandemic really of highly pathogenic avian influenza. It’s in over 65 countries.”
The first cases of H5N1 in Quebec were detected in April in geese, presumed to have been infected by birds who migrated from Europe. Ducks in particular can carry the disease without getting sick, but transmit it through their secretions or feces. Wild birds can contact commercial livestock, which sometimes reside outdoors, or contaminated soil or straw can be tracked into farms on tractor tires or boots.
In mid-April, Brome Lake Ducks in the Eastern Townships announced three of their 13 facilities had been hit. The company had to kill 150,000 birds and destroy 400,000 Pekin duck eggs, and lay off 300 staff, the largest cull in the company’s 110-year history. Because the losses made up almost all of the company’s breeding stock, it would take up to a year to get back to full capacity, management said. Since insurance companies don’t compensate for bird mortalities, Brome Lake Ducks is expected to lose millions.
Diseased birds may display a lack of appetite and energy, respiratory problems like coughing and sneezing, and swollen heads, Quebec’s Agriculture Ministry notes. Because the disease is extremely infectious and has an incubation period of up to 14 days, authorities will order the culling of all birds in a barn within hours of a positive test. There is no known treatment.
There have been a few cases of the disease transferring to mammals, including raccoons, foxes, possums and minks. Close to 100 dead harbour seals were found along the banks of the Lower St. Lawrence this year as of August, about six times the usual rate of mortality. At least 15 tested positive for avian flu.
Because the virus hits mainly Canada Geese and snow geese which are now migrating south, numbers of infections are expected to drop over the winter.
At present, the virus has only hit a small fraction of the wild bird population and the roughly 1,200 commercial chicken and turkey farms in Quebec, Vaillancourt said. Scientists postulate that numbers have been higher in western Canada because there are more poultry farms, many of which are in close proximity, and more geese farms in which birds live outdoors.
“It’s the question no one has the answer for,” Lair said. “This virus first appeared in Europe and has been circulating there for two years now, so it doesn’t seem to go away very fast.
“So we should have to expect another year for sure.”
Health
Canada Falling Short in Adult Vaccination Rates – VOCM
Canada is about where it should be when it comes to childhood vaccines, but for adult vaccinations it’s a different story.
Dr. Vivien Brown of Immunize Canada says the overall population should have rates of between 80 and 90 per cent for most vaccines, but that is not the case.
She says most children are in that range but not for adult vaccines and ultimately the most at-risk populations are not being reached.
She says the population is under immunized for conditions such as pneumonia, shingles, tetanus, and pertussis.
Brown wants people to talk with their family physician or pharmacist to see if they are up-to-date on vaccines, and to get caught up because many are “killer diseases.”
Health
Bird flu virus found in grocery milk as officials say supply still safe – The Washington Post
Viral fragments of bird flu have been identified in samples of milk taken from grocery store shelves in the United States, a finding that does not necessarily suggest a threat to human health but indicates the avian flu virus is more widespread among dairy herds than previously thought, according to two public health officials and a public health expert who was briefed on the issue.
The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it had been testing milk samples throughout the dairy production process and confirmed the detection of viral particles “in some of the samples,” but it declined to provide details.
The presence of genetic fragments of the virus in milk is not unexpected. Pasteurization typically works to inactivate pathogens, said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. It generally does not remove genetic material, Nuzzo said, but typically renders pathogens unable to cause harm to people.
The greater concern, however, “is that it’s showing up in a lot more samples, meaning the infection is more widespread in dairy herds than we thought,” said one public health official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share information not yet made public.
In a four-page statement, the FDA said some of the samples collected have “indicated the presence” of the bird flu virus based on testing that detects viral particles but does not distinguish whether they are active or dead. The finding of virus “does not mean that the sample contains an intact, infectious pathogen,” the agency’s statement said.
Additional laboratory testing is underway to grow the virus in cells and in fertilized eggs, the latter being the “gold standard” for sensitive detection of active, infectious virus, the FDA said. “Importantly, additional testing is required to determine whether intact pathogen is still present and if it remains infectious, which determines whether there is any risk of illness associated with consuming the product,” the FDA statement said.
FDA officials said results are expected in the next few days to weeks.
“To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the agency said in its statement.
Officials and experts did not have additional details about the number of milk samples that were positive for particles of bird flu or where the samples originated.
Although this strain of avian flu has been circulating for more than 20 years, its leap into cows is of substantial concern, surprising even longtime observers of the virus. More than two dozen livestock herds in at least eight states have been infected with avian flu since March 25, prompting investigations by federal and state officials.
For weeks, key federal agencies have expressed confidence in the safety of the commercial milk supply, including pasteurized products sold at grocery stores. The FDA has highlighted data showing pasteurization inactivates other viruses and pointed to studies showing that the pasteurization process for eggs — which occurs at a lower temperature than what is used for milk — deactivates the highly pathogenic avian influenza.
The International Dairy Foods Association, which represents the nation’s dairy manufacturing and marketing industry, said that viral fragments are “nothing more than evidence that the virus is dead.”
“Milk and milk products produced and processed in the United States are among the safest in the world,” spokesman Matt Herrick wrote in an email, adding that “viral fragments are simply indicative of pasteurization doing its job effectively and protecting our commercial milk supply.”
In recent weeks, multiple experts expressed confidence that the pasteurization process ensures there is no threat to the safety of the nation’s milk supply but said the federal government should still perform tests to confirm that is the case.
Flu is a “fairly wimpy virus,” meaning it is “fairly readily inactivated,” said Richard J. Webby, a virologist at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “But that’s something that has to be tested.”
One case of avian flu has been reported in a Texas farmworker in recent weeks, only the second human case ever of bird flu in the United States.
So far, the virus has not acquired the ability to spread efficiently in people.
But as it is able to jump from animal to animal, prospects increase for it mutating to cause sustained person-to-person transmission — a development that could fuel a pandemic.
State health officials have tested 23 people with flu-like symptoms, but only the dairy worker in Texas has tested positive during the current outbreak. Ongoing surveillance of emergency department visits and flu tests in regions where bird flu has been detected has not flagged unusual trends in flu-like illnesses, or eye inflammation, the only symptom experienced by the dairy worker, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who say the risk to the general public of bird flu remains low.
The lack of more human cases is a good sign, health officials say.
The key to containing the outbreak resides in livestock herds. Testing of cows is voluntary. U.S. Department of Agriculture protocols restrict testing to cows with specific symptoms and limits the number of tests per farm.
Health
Avian influenza spread: WHO gives public health warning as FDA calms food safety concerns – Food Ingredients First
23 April 2024 — The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the ongoing spread of avian influenza poses a “significant public health concern” and urged health authorities, especially in the US, to closely monitor infections in cows. However, the US FDA maintains that the virus is not currently a concern to consumer health and downplayed its impact on commercial milk production.
Earlier this month, the largest producer of fresh eggs in the US halted production at a Texas plant after bird flu was detected in its chickens. Cal-Maine Foods said that about 3.6% of its total flock was destroyed after the infection.
However, the virus, also known as H5N1, has now been found in at least 26 dairy herds across eight US states, marking the first time this strain of bird flu has been detected in cattle, according to officials.
At least 21 states have restricted cattle importations from states where the virus is known to have infected dairy cows.
The US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service strongly recommends minimizing the movement of cattle, but has not issued federal quarantine orders.
Public health threat
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed this month that a dairy worker in Texas, who reportedly had exposure to dairy cattle presumed to have had avian influenza, contracted the virus and is now recovering.
“This infection does not change the H5N1 bird flu human health risk assessment for the US general public, which CDC considers to be low,” the agency said in a press release, while acknowledging that people who come into more frequent contact with possibly infected birds or other mammals have a higher risk.
Meanwhile, WHO’s chief scientist, Dr. Jeremy Farrar, told reporters recently in Geneva, Switzerland, that H5N1 has had an “extremely high” mortality rate among the several hundred people known to have been infected with it to date.
However, no human-to-human H5N1 transmission has yet been recorded.
“H5N1 is an influenza infection, predominantly started in poultry and ducks and has spread effectively over the course of the last one or two years to become a global zoonotic — animal — pandemic,” said Farrar.
“The great concern, of course, is that in doing so and infecting ducks and chickens — but now increasingly mammals — the virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans.
“And then critically, the ability to go from human-to-human transmission.”
Concerns with cattle
US health officials have stressed that bird flu’s risk to the public is low, and the country’s food supply remains safe and stable.
“At this time, there continues to be no concern that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health or that it affects the safety of the interstate commercial milk supply,” the FDA said in a statement.
According to officials, farmers are being urged to test cows that show symptoms of infection and separate them from the herd, where they usually recover within two weeks.
US producers are not permitted to sell milk from sick cows, while milk sold across state lines must be pasteurized or heat-treated to kill viruses, including influenza.
“We firmly believe that pasteurization provides a safe milk supply,” Tracey Forfa, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, told a webinar audience last week.
However, WHO’s Farrar has urged further caution by public health authorities “because it [the virus] may evolve into transmitting in different ways.”
“Do the milking structures of cows create aerosols? Is it the environment which they’re living in? Is it the transport system that is spreading this around the country?” he said.
“This is a huge concern, and I think we have to…make sure that if H5N1 did come across to humans with human-to-human transmission that we were in a position to immediately respond with access equitably to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.”
According to a new European Food Safety Authority report, outbreaks of avian influenza continue to spread in the EU and beyond.
By Joshua Poole
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