Canadian officials ordered the slaughter of some 19 million chickens and turkeys in British Columbia to try to stop the spread of a highly contagious bird flu.
The cull in Fraser Valley, which would affect some 80 percent of the province's poultry producers, was ordered after avian flu spread beyond an 11km hot zone surrounding the first affected farms.
"This decision was made in order to eradicate the disease here in Canada," Agriculture Minister Bob Speller said Monday in Ottawa. He said the cull was recommended by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Jim Clarke, a spokesman for the food inspection agency, said: "We are currently not catching up" with the spread of the virus. He said a mass slaughter was the only realistic way to stop its spread.
About 400,000 birds had already been ordered slaughtered before Monday's decision.
Two workers have caught mild forms of the H7 avian flu but have recovered. The strain, unlike the flu that killed 24 people in Thailand and Vietnam, is not considered life-threatening to humans.
The cull will be centered on the Abbotsford, Speller said.
The agency also will issue a new biosecurity protocol for those in contact with poultry or the poultry industry, said Dr. Francine Lord of the food inspection agency.
The measures include barring people from entering poultry premises without the owner's permission, sanitizing vehicles and equipment entering and leaving and a foot bath at entrances to poultry cages, she said.
"Rigorous and resolute adherence to biosecurity practices will help ensure that disease spread is contained while depopulation eliminates the virus from [British Colombia's] poultry," she said.
In the US, 1,000 birds were killed after the flu turned up on a Texas farm.
Speller said some compensation will be provided for the producers and processors of the slaughtered birds.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS