No Need For Wildlife Cull, Says Badger Trust
icWales.co.uk
2006 May 30
Steve Dube, Western Mail
THE Badger Trust has looked to history to support its campaign for the Government to resist a cull of wildlife in its efforts to tackle the epidemic of bovine tuberculosis.
The trust says the disease was almost wiped out over the decade up to 1970 without any wildlife cull.
A successful area eradication programme followed an annual slaughter of cattle - up to 23,716 cattle in 1936 and 15,000 in 1961 - and annual testing of cattle. By 1979 it was down to just 628 individual cases.
There are now 30,000 cases a year and hotspots of the disease in West Wales, and parts of Powys and Monmouthshire.
"The Government has still not ruled out killing wildlife, even though its own scientists have said it could make matters worse," said trust chairman David Williams. "They have also said movement of untested cattle far outweighs any wildlife considerations."
Poultry, Wild Bird Trade Spread Bird Flu--Experts
Reuters AlertNet
2006 May 30
Svetlana Kovalyova
ROME, May 30 (Reuters) - The multi-billion dollar trade in poultry and wild birds, especially illegal trading, may have helped spread deadly bird flu around the world, leading bird flu experts said on Tuesday.
The virus has killed 127 of the 224 people it has infected since re-emerging in Asia in late 2003, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
As the deadly H5N1 virus spread rapidly in the past six months from Asia into parts of the Middle East, Europe and Africa, specialists have been working out how it travels.
"In this outbreak of H5N1, it's a combination -- there is no doubt that the wild birds play their role (in spreading the virus), but so do humans," Robert Webster, a leading avian flu expert, told Reuters.
"People acknowledge that probably the most important spreader of influenza overall is the human and the globalisation of trade," Webster, professor at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in the United States, said on the sidelines of a bird flu conference in Rome, organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Animal Health Organisation (OIE).
He said there was evidence that migrating wild birds helped to spread bird flu to Mongolia from China last year and in general contributed to the spread of the virus from Asia to Europe, the Middle Asia and Africa.
Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study
04/01/2006
Concern remains high for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus and its
potential impacts on human and animal health.As of early May 2006, the World Health
Organization (WHO) reported a total of 207 human cases with 115 fatalities. A total of 62 human fatalities have occurred in 2006, with the highest number (14) in Indonesia.
In Egypt, 13 human cases, resulting in 5 fatalities, have been reported since late March 2006. Human cases continue to be strongly associated with contact with diseased poultry.
Since our last update (SCWDS BRIEFS Vol 21,No. 4), HPAI H5N1 virus has been detected in wild birds in Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. Affected birds primarily were waterfowl species, including swans
(Cygnus spp.), tufted ducks (Aythya fuliga), and common pochards (Aythya ferina).
In Germany, HPAI H5N1 virus was found in a clinically affected domestic cat and in a dead wild stone marten (Martes foina). Domestic poultry infections have been detected in France, Germany, Sweden, and other European countries and several African countries.
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