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Washington.– The US Department of Agriculture (DA) has temporarily banned the entry of all imports of domestic and wild birds, along with poultry and related produce from the US state of Arkansas, Haiti and the UK following official confirmation by animal health authorities of avian influenza (AI) or bird flu virus in these areas.
The ban covers all domestic and wild birds and their products, including day-old chicks and eggs.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the ban and other emergency measures are necessary to protect human health and the P60-billion poultry industry in the Philippines, which has remained free of bird flu ever since the H5N1 strain of the virus first resurfaced in Asia in 2003.
The Philippines remains one of only three AI-free countries in Southeast Asia. The two others are Brunei and Singapore.
Yap issued the ban after the Office International des Epizooties (OIE) or the World Animal Health Organization confirmed that low pathogenic AI has been detected in a poultry farm in Arkansas , Washington county affecting broiler chickens.
The OIE based its declaration on a report submitted by Dr. Stan Bruntz, the epidemiologist of the US National Surveillance Unit. Dr. Nigel Gibbens, UK’s chief veterinary officer, meanwhile reported the occurrence of highly pathogenic AI in a poultry farm in Shenington, Oxfordshire, England.
Separately, Max Millien, the director of the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, informed the OIE of the presence of a low pathogenic strain of the disease in poultry, turkey and fighting cocks in Centre, Carca La Source, Nord, Cap Haitian and Sud, Miragoane in Haiti.
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"The US Department of Agriculture (DA) has temporarily banned the entry of all imports of domestic and wild birds, along with poultry and related produce from the US state of Arkansas, Haiti and the UK following official confirmation by animal health authorities of avian influenza (AI) or bird flu virus in these areas," the DT reports.
This is not a level playing field.
With the USA, only chickens from the province of Arkansas are banned.
But with Haiti and UK, chickens are banned no matter what province of Haiti or the UK they come from.
A sweeping ban should also be applied to the USA, too. After all, it's more likely that chickens outside of Arkansas in the USA will be infected by Arkansas chickens than by either Haitian or UK chickens.
You know as well as we all do that the FDA only bans foods at the source, not asa blanket "banning".
Where the source isn't readily identified, the ban becomes universal in that country.
That's the way it works in the REAL WORLD, not in accordance to your desires and allegations.
Wake up to the way things are REALLY done, not to the way you think they should be done, according to your warped mind.
TexasBill
It gets all twisted out of shape-------
TB