Mon, Oct 24, 2005 page1

• Taiwanese birds didn't pass flu: COA

  DON'T BLAME US The government said that a batch of Taiwanese birds were not held in the same cage as a parrot from Suriname that died of avian flu in the UK

  • AGENCIES
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  The Council of Agriculture yesterday denied that a batch of Taiwanese birds passed on avian flu to a parrot shipped to the UK when they were quarantined in British customs.

  "The birds from Taiwan were held in the same room, but not in the same cage, as the Suriname parrot," said Watson Sung (宋華聰), director general of the council's Animal and Plant Inspection and Quarantine Bureau.

  "So the death of the Suriname parrot has nothing to do with the Taiwanese birds," he said.

  Song was responding to news reports that British health officials suspected a Suriname parrot that died and tested positive for avian flu may have been infected by a batch of Taiwanese birds when they were kept in the same cage during quarantine.

  It was Britain's first confirmed case of bird flu since 1992. Tests were underway at a British lab to determine whether the parrot had the deadly H5N1 strain.

  import ban

  The British government called on the EU to ban live wild bird imports from anywhere in the world after the parrot died.

  Junior Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw said he expected support from European partners and that the ban could be imposed within days.

  "This is actually something we've been considering for some time, before the death of the parrot. It just so happens that the formal request has been made now," Bradshaw told BBC Radio late on Saturday.

  The parrot was among a batch of 148 parrots imported from Suriname last month. They were quarantined together with a batch of 216 Taiwanese birds.

  After the parrot died, British health workers destroyed all the Suriname and Taiwanese birds.

  Taiwan detected the weaker strain of bird flu, H5N2, last year. But on Oct. 15, Taiwan detected H5N1, the strain that can pass from birds to humans, in samples taken from 1,600 Chinese birds smuggled by a Panamanian freighter into Taichung Harbor.

  Officials destroyed the birds and detected H5N1 a few days later.

  Bracing for a bird flu pandemic, the National Health Research Institute has succeeded in developing anti-viral flu drug Tamiflu and two Taiwanese pharmaceutical companies have begun trial production.

  According to Chinese-language newspapers, Yung Zip Chemical Industry Co and Scino Pharm have begun trial production of Tamiflu.

  The Department of Health said the nation will begin mass production if bird flu breaks out in Taiwan.

  The government has asked the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche to release the patent on Tamiflu, but said it will go ahead with the production even if the company does not release its rights over the drug.

  tests underway

  Meanwhile, scientists are conducting tests to determine whether bird flu cases discovered in Britain, Sweden and Croatia were the lethal strain that has killed more than 60 people, as countries around the world scrambled to halt the spread of the virus.

  Health authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have asked residents in the capital Abu Dhabi to get rid of all pet birds or chickens they may be keeping in their homes, the local newspaper Gulf News reported yesterday.

  Concerned authorities such as the municipality and environment agencies have advised residents to either kill their pets, eat the chickens, or hand over the birds to the municipality which will have them destroyed, the paper said.

  Congo on Saturday joined a growing list of African countries to ban imports of livestock and poultry from countries affected by bird flu, and Russia recorded a new outbreak of the disease in a region of the Ural mountains.

  In Croatia, the Agriculture Ministry said the country's first cases of avian flu were confirmed on Friday in six swans found dead in a national park in the east of the country.

  far-flung cases

  The H5N1 strain has recently been found in birds in Russia, Turkey and Romania.

  Sweden's National Veterinary Institute said late on Saturday that a case of bird flu had been confirmed in one of four ducks found dead on Friday in Eskilstuna, about 100km west of Stockholm. Officials said it would take days to determine whether it was the H5N1 strain.

  H5N1 is easily transmitted between birds, but is hard for humans to contract. Experts are closely watching the disease, however, for fear it could mutate into a form easily transmitted between humans and cause a pandemic that could kill millions.

  In Croatia, Minister of Agriculture Petar Cobankovic said ``there is no room for panic'' in the wake of the country confirming its first cases of bird flu, in wild migratory swans.

  In Britain, the chief veterinarian, Debby Reynolds, said the country's disease-free status was not affected by the case of bird flu there, because the parrot had died while in quarantine. She said the incident demonstrated the importance of Britain's tough quarantine system.
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