The deadly bird flu virus may have struck a big commercial poultry farm in Russia for the first time, a news agency reported on Saturday. So far bird flu outbreaks in Russia have largely been confined to villages that make little contribution to the national food chain.
Health officials in the western Siberian region of Omsk may have found the virus on a farm with up to 142,000 birds, Interfax news agency reported.
Interfax quoted Omsk officials as saying the area would be quarantined and all poultry slaughtered immediately if laboratory checks confirmed cases of bird flu.
Russian officials are battling to ensure the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, confirmed in other parts of Omsk weeks ago, does not infect humans as it has done in some Asian countries.
"There have been no cases of people getting ill... To prevent mass bird deaths...the Federal Consumers Rights and Welfare Agency has mapped out and passed on to the regions a package of sanitary and anti-epidemic measures," the state consumers rights and health watchdog said in a statement. Experts fear that migratory birds could spread the virus around the globe, unleashing a flu pandemic that could kill millions of people and cause devastating economic losses.
As of Friday morning, outbreaks had been officially confirmed in 40 Russian villages across western Siberia, while 78 other small settlements had suspected cases, the agriculture ministry said.
Poultry farms and slaughterhouses in European Russia, including areas near Moscow, have stepped up veterinary checks and sanitary controls. Separately, Russian veterinary officials were checking reports of a suspected case of foot and mouth disease in a cattle farm in Khabarovsk region in the Russian Far East.
Itar-Tass news agency said 46 cows in Khabarovsk region, where foot and mouth first appeared earlier this year, may have contracted the highly contagious disease.
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