Great Britian reports that the there is an outbreak of bird flu on a large turkey farm. nytimes story
Japan is battling the same virus strain, again in poultry farms, for the fourth time
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This is the H5N1 strain and "The Health Protection Agency said the current level of risk to humans from H5N1 was extremely low." However, it is unusual because they don't quite know how it arrived- since this isn't the wild bird migration time. It is a serious economic problem and many birds will be sacrificed to limit the infection spread.
Britain scrambled to contain its first outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu in domestic poultry on Saturday after the virus was found at a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey producer.
Some 2,500 turkeys have died since Thursday at the Bernard Matthews farm near Lowestoft in eastern England. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said all 159,000 turkeys on the farm would be culled.
From the food consumer.org page
Government officials and scientists have been worried that the persistent worldwide outbreaks of H5N1 may lead to a mutation in the virus making it more infectious yet less lethal. As a result, it may infect millions of people and kill hundreds of thousands worldwide.
The bird flu outbreak in Britain was surprising as the virus was not expected to be so active at this time of year. High activity of the virus should be in spring when migrating birds are expected to spread the disease, according to bird flu expert Colin Butter of the Institute of Animal Health.
"The next thing we need to know is if this is a primary or secondary case. If this is a secondary case, it is much more serious. If this is the first case, or 'reference case', and we can stamp it out, the outbreak will be controlled," Butter was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The Britain's poultry industry reminds consumers that eating poultry is not a risk for the bird flu. The World Health Organization said early that eating well cooked poultry meat is not a way to get infected. But handling sick birds is considered the major route for human infection.