Have we overlooked the chicken story?

[spindrifter]

Japan bans UK poultry as bird flu cases spread

Alok Jha, science correspondent
Monday May 1, 2006
The Guardian


Japan has become the first country to ban imports of British poultry amid growing concerns about the threat of avian flu. The announcement comes as more than 15,000 chickens face slaughter in Norfolk after the virus was discovered on a further two farms over the weekend.

The ban is an attempt to prevent the spread of avian flu to Japan's domestic birds. Hundreds of thousands of birds were culled last year as the H5N2 strain of avian flu was found in farms near Tokyo.


<snip>

Early tests suggest that the virus in the new cases is related to the H7N3 avian flu found at Witford Lodge farm in Hockering last week.

<snip>

The H7 virus is not as dangerous to human health as the H5N1 avian flu strain which has so far claimed the lives of more than 100 people in Asia.

Snip>

http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/news/0,,1765007,00.html

[leftchick]

1. nope

the US has overlooked the dictator story.

[Canuckistanian]

2. Japan imports British chickens?

Since when? There's a huge poultry producer right off Japan's shores.

Why do they need to import UK poultry?

[spindrifter]

3. Interesting point--

the article doesn't give the usual stats so that one could know whether or not the Japanese ban on British poultry really has economic meaning. I suspect the Japanese are just doing this so they can let their people know they won't have to go through what happened when they did have a threat from avian flu.
I thought the most interesting thing was that this flu is likely the less serious (for us) H7--unless of course that mutates.

[Canuckistanian]

6. The Japanese have always been vigilant about their imports

They are the first to ban imports in the case of any danger.

They were the first to ban Canadian beef after the mad cow incidents here.

But, they are also fair. They'll re-instate imports if it can be scientifically and statistically proven that imports are safe.

I applaud them for that.

[Faygo Kid]

4. Everybody do The Chicken Dance.

Anda one, anda two, and anda three. . .

[mike_c]

5. not a story yet, just another avian flu variant among thousands...

...in the wild. Bit of caution, perhaps over-caution, on Japan's part, but it's way too soon to tell IMO. The general drift of bad avian influenzas is usually the other direction, i.e. from asia to europe.