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Israeli chicken banned due to bird flu Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395620139&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFullhttp://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395620139&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Mar. 16, 2006 18:39 | Updated Mar. 17, 2006 19:41
EU temporarily bans import of Israeli poultry products
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVITCH, AMIR MIZROCH, AP, AND JPOST.COM
The European Commission on Friday placed a temporary ban on the import of Israeli poultry products following the confirmation of the lethal H5 bird flu strain at four poultry farms in Israel.
The commission will convene next week to reconsider the ban, which applies to live birds, meat, and eggs, Israel Radio reported.
Earlier Friday, the Health Ministry confirmed that the virus responsible for the recent deaths of approximately 11,000 turkeys at the southern kibbutzim of Holit and Ein Hashlosha was indeed the H5 strain. The same strain was identified at Kibbutz Nachshon near Beit Shemesh, following an unusual amount of poultry deaths, and at the Lachish-area moshav of Sde Moshe.
Three people from Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, including a Thai worker, who worked at the coops and came into contact with the infected turkeys, are currently under observation at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. They are being kept in an isolation ward.
The three kibbutzim and moshav, and a radius of three kilometers around each, have been placed under veterinary quarantine. The Health Ministry has ordered the turkey flocks on all four farms destroyed, as well as all those in coops within the quarantine radius. On Sunday, the birds - numbering hundreds of thousands - will be put down by poison administered via the watering system.
The government will compensate the farmers for the financial loss.
The World Health Organization on Friday commended the way Israel handled the potentially dangerous outbreak. The spokesman for the department in charge of handling bird flu told Israel Radio that the government's policy of transparency and reassuring the public were "encouraging."
Eshkol Regional Council head Uri Naamati said that turkeys at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha and Kibbutz Holit started dying several days ago, and the rate of death increased rapidly on Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Wednesday the largest group of fowl died, and the company that runs the coops at Ein Hashlosha suspected that the cause of death was the deadly H5N1 strain.
The coops at Ein Hashlosha are not operated by the kibbutz, but by an outside company. Samples were sent to the Agriculture Ministry on Wednesday, and the results received Thursday tested positive for bird flu. "Definitely the H5 strain, but we are not sure if it is for certain the H5N1 strain. Personally I think it is the H5N1, but we will have to wait for the final results," Naamati told The Jerusalem PostThursday night.
Naamati said that all the birds at Ein Hashlosha were local fowl bred at a farm in the area. The life span of a turkey at Ein Hashlosha is 26 weeks, Naamati said. "Six weeks after they are born at a breeding farm in the south of the country, they are brought to Ein Hashlosha, where they spend 20 weeks before being slaughtered and shipped out."
Israel has had sporadic cases of avian flu in wild birds, but not of the specific H5N1 strain.
The H5N1 strain has killed or forced the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003, and recently spread to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
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