Bird Flu Raises Concerns in France and Nigeria

Published: February 26, 2006

PARIS, Feb. 25 — The announcement on Saturday that the deadly strain of bird flu was discovered in domesticated turkeys in France has disrupted the country's $7 billion poultry market and raised fears among the French that they could be vulnerable to the disease.

President Jacques Chirac, a former agriculture minister, met with farmers and veterinarians on Saturday morning at the opening of France's annual international agricultural fair and urged calm.

There is no "absolutely no danger in eating poultry and eggs," Mr. Chirac said, eating a chicken dish to press the point. He said that the industry had been "profoundly hurt and disrupted," and that "a completely unjustified sort of total panic" was developing.

For the first time in the fair's 42 years, no live birds are on display.

Detection of the A(H5N1) flu strain on a turkey farm in eastern France represented the first time the virus had been found in farm animals in the 25 countries of the European Union.

France had already been reeling from the news that a wild duck, found dead nearly two weeks ago in the department of Ain, the same area where the turkey farm is situated, had been infected.

Those fears, followed by the confirmation on Saturday that a farm with a flock of 11,000 turkeys had been struck by the disease, have sent poultry sales plummeting.

Although the official estimate of market loss is 30 percent, some officials at the Rungis wholesale market in Paris reported a drop of close to 50 percent in the past two days.

The detection of the avian flu virus threatens not only to transform the eating habits of the country, but also to damage the export market for the poultry products of France, the largest producer in Europe and the fourth largest market in the world.

Japan announced Friday that it had temporarily banned the import of all poultry products from France — even foie gras packaged before the virus struck. Japan is the fourth-largest importer of foie gras.

Japan's agriculture minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, met Mr. Chirac briefly at the fair on Saturday, and told reporters afterward, "I am sure that French producers are responding correctly to our wishes and that this incident will not affect the relationship between France and Japan."

The French government has taken aggressive preventive measures throughout the poultry industry, ordering birds confined to pens and quarantining the area where the original infected duck, and later a second duck, were found. But the turkey farm is within that protection zone, the French agriculture minister, Dominique Bussereau, said Friday.

There is a plan to vaccinate many of the country's birds. The vaccine can prevent the flu in most cases, but it can also mask the symptoms of the virus in some infected birds, turning them into silent carriers, leading some countries to ban the import of birds from nations that vaccinate.

Also on Friday, authorities in Lyon simulated the arrival of two potentially infected passengers on a plane from an unidentified Southeast Asian country. Daniel Clair, the owner of the turkey farm where the flu was confirmed, told the newspaper Le Parisien that he thought the virus was carried on bales of straw that he had put into his indoor pens after his turkeys had been treated for diarrhea.

A local veterinarian, Claude Lessus, who told Le Figaro that he had prescribed antibiotics for the turkeys, said Mr. Clair collected seven big bales of straw with his tractor, adding, "This could be the means by which the animals became infected."

On Wednesday night, his turkeys were fine, he said. But on Thursday morning, he found 400 dead birds in his flock, and others that were sick. It was, he said, "a thing so thunderous, I immediately understood."

Mr. Clair's remaining turkeys were slaughtered, even before the final determination was announced after 1 a.m. Saturday.

Mr. Clair, his wife and their 8-year-old son are being treated with Tamiflu, an antiviral drug, and have been quarantined in their home. He said he had been told to notify the authorities if they became ill. An 11-year-old daughter, who was not at home when authorities intervened, has not been allowed to return.

A security zone of two miles and a surveillance zone of five miles has been created around the farm, French officials said. The police are disinfecting the farm — where other animals are also raised — as well as the wheels of vehicles that had traveled near the area.

Mr. Clair said that he wanted all necessary precautions to be taken, but he confessed he felt a bit like a pariah. The policeman delivering the flu medicine refused to come up to his house, but left the drug on the road, he said; his mail is not being delivered.

"I have begun to worry," Mr. Clair said. "We have started to run out of food."

Bird flu has hit six other European Union countries: Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia. On Friday, European health ministers met in Vienna, where they ate poultry products and discussed strategies.

On Friday, Mr. Chirac served Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, suprême de volaille, a creamed chicken dish, at Élysée Palace.

The disease is highly contagious among poultry and can spread quickly through an entire flock. It can be contracted by people who come into contact with infected birds during slaughtering, plucking feathers, butchering or preparation for cooking, but it is not transmitted through eating thoroughly cooked poultry.

The infection could devastate France's upscale free-range poultry industry.

The area of Bresse, for example, which is close to the area of the turkey farm, is the only region of France whose poultry receives the coveted designation "AOC" ("Appelation d'Origine Contrôlée").

New Human Cases in Asia

SHANGHAI, Feb. 25 (Reuters) — China reported two new human cases of bird flu on Saturday, the New China News Agency said. In Indonesia, tests confirmed that a 27-year-old woman who died Monday was the country's 20th bird-flu fatality.

The Chinese cases involve a 9-year-old girl in eastern Zhejiang Province who had visited relatives who kept poultry and a woman who farmed in neighboring Anhui Province. Both are in critical condition, the agency reported.

The victim in Indonesia was said to be a housewife who had direct contact with her neighbor's chickens.

Maia de la Baume contributed reporting for this article.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/international/europe/26france.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin (February 26, 2006)