=
<B><center>2 Mar 2006 15:09 GMT VITAL SIGNS:
<font size=+1 color=red>Advancing Avian Flu Puts U.S. On Defensive </font>
Copyright © 2006, Dow Jones Newswires
By Kristen Gerencher
<A href="http://framehosting.dowjonesnews.com/sample/samplestory.asp?StoryID=2006030215090002&Take=1">framehosting.dowjonesnews.com</a></center>
SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones) -- With bird flu being found in a growing number of flocks throughout Europe, Africa and Asia, the United States needs to prepare for the possibility that the virus will make its way to poultry here, experts said.
In February alone, the virulent avian influenza strain H5N1 spread to 17 new countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday. The virus was first discovered in Hong Kong in 1997. </b>
The virus is deadly to birds, masses of which have been destroyed to try to contain the disease that's believed to pass from their contact with wild migratory waterfowl, either through shared contaminated water like a pond or via droppings that adhere to farm straw and other materials.
On Tuesday, German health officials said a dead cat on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen tested positive for bird flu. Last week, France confirmed an outbreak of bird flu on a farm, prompting several nations to ban French poultry imports.
Though rare, bird flu in humans has a death rate of about 50%. Confirmed human cases worldwide stand at 173, resulting in 93 deaths since December 2003.
Most of the human cases happened after people had close contact with sick birds, and none have been linked to eating properly cooked poultry or poultry products, the WHO said.
The worst fear -- that the virus acquires the ability to pass easily between people -- hasn't happened, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC,) which monitors public-health concerns. Still, a few human cases appear to have passed from an infected person to a family member caregiver who had no direct contact with birds.
"There's no evidence it's efficiently transmitted from person to person, nor is it being sustained in the human population when it comes to person to person transmission," CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said. "An overwhelming majority have gotten this from handling sick or dying birds."
However remote the possibility of a bird-flu pandemic, bird watchers may be able to help authorities mount an early and swift response to a potential one by reporting any suspicious group bird deaths to their state health department or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said Dr. Leon Russell, president of the World Veterinary Association, a nonprofit federation of 80 national veterinary associations.
"It's analogous to West Nile (virus) in that we started having big die-outs in the crow family," he said.
Domestic chickens, ducks and other birds sometimes interact with wild migratory birds, especially on small farms, but contact is generally limited in the U.S. because most poultry is kept indoors, said Dr. Kathy Neuzil, chair of the pandemic influenza task force for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Russell agreed." Most parts of the world that have this problem have the birds outside. That's pretty common in Asia and Africa and Europe. The wild birds can fly in and land on the same water the domestic birds are on."
Overlapping migratory bird flyways are cause for concern, but chicken-raising standards are different in the U.S., said Richard Lobb, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, a trade group in Washington that represents major chicken processors such as Tyson Foods (TSN) , Pilgrims Pride (PPC) and Perdue.
"This thing has spread like wildfire in Southeast Asia and now in Nigeria, but conditions are totally different," Lobb said. "You walk into a rural village and there are chickens running all over the place."
In the U.S., poultry is routinely tested for influenza before heading to market, he said. "If we find any with H5 or H7...that flock will be destroyed on the farm and will not enter the food supply."
Even the 1% of niche U.S. chicken farms that are free-range have protections in place, he said. They typically offer small, fenced-in pens next to the main chicken house without exposing poultry to the risk of contact with wild birds.
Still, the possibility of H5N1 arriving in North America is real, Lobb said. "It could happen, but I think we'd get some early warning. The farms on the West Coast have the highest biosecurity in the country."
The U.S. chicken industry's forecast remains unchanged so far. It's expecting retail sales of $50 billion this year, though its export business was down 30% in December compared with December 2004 as affected nations tried to sell their own supply first, Lobb said. The backlog may cause prices of dark meat to drop in U.S. stores.
Cultural differences also play a role in trying to contain the virus. Some Asian cultures in particular integrate birds into the household and some American ethnic groups also hold live bird markets in big cities, both of which potentially increase bird-flu contact with humans, Neuzil said.
And there's no denying the impact poverty can have since trained workers, laboratory infrastructure and other resources are critical to effective surveillance.
"In areas of the world where you have a smaller number of chickens but spread out in more places, it's harder to spot an outbreak even if you're looking for it," she said. Plus, if poultry-handling education fails to reach remote areas, problems may be detected "later in the outbreak when it's more difficult to control."
Even so, bird flu is no stranger to the U.S.
"We haven't had H5N1, but other types of avian influenza viruses have been detected in the U.S.," Neuzil said. "Because we've had very active surveillance systems, they've been picked up quickly and have not caused much of a problem."
The last major outbreak of a highly infectious bird flu in poultry happened in Pennsylvania in 1983-84, according to the National Chicken Council. About 15 million chickens were destroyed or died in that outbreak of the strain H5N2.
Of course, a human pandemic may not come from bird flu. It's just that avian flu -- with its accelerating serious effects on birds, adaptability and danger to people -- is a candidate at the moment, said Russell, also an epidemiology professor at Texas A&M in College Station.
"As long as we're having human cases, there's a possibility it may mutate and start transmitting person to person, and then we're in trouble," he said.
Similar to human pandemics in 1957 and 1968, a mild pandemic would infect an estimated 75 million Americans, kill 100,000 of them and reduce the gross domestic product by 1.5%, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released in December 2005.
A severe outbreak would sicken 90 million, lead to 2 million deaths and push the U.S. economy into a recession with a GDP drop of 5%, the CBO said. Such a scenario would be more akin to the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed as many as 50 million people worldwide.
The regular seasonal flu sends an estimated 200,000 Americans to the hospital and kills about 36,000 mostly elderly or immune-compromised people every year.
Employers need to address issues such as crisis leadership, worker communications, insurance coverage, telecommuting and travel restrictions in the event a pandemic does occur, according to Mercer Human Resource Consulting, which launched a Web site,
www.mercerhr.com/avianflu, for this purpose.
"Business continuity planning for multinationals is particularly complex, but a flu pandemic will be challenging even for companies with a predominantly U.S.-based work force," Jim Reynolds, a principal in Mercer's Health and Productivity Management business in Denver, said in a prepared statement.
"Put simply, since a pandemic could incapacitate any member of the management team, there must be a plan to identify a group of managers who can back up one another and who will be available to exercise leadership in different locations and at different times during a pandemic."
Neuzil agreed. "There is a lot we can do now with telecommuting sort of options... To get those in place as much as we can would be a real benefit."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
