Bird flu flares up in Asia

By Lindsey Klingele on 12/17/2008
of MeatingPlace.com

More than 300,000 chickens were slaughtered in China after agriculture officials found birds there infected with the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian influenza, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The occurrence is the latest in a string of bird flu-related scares to occur in Asia over the past few weeks, following flare-ups in Hong Kong (see Hong Kong confirms bird flu is deadly H5N1 strain, Meatingplace.com, Dec. 11, 2008) and India.

The outbreak in the northwest province of Jiangsu is the first to be reported in China since June. According to the World Health Organization, avian influenza has claimed the lives of 29 individuals this year.

Scientists and government officials are questioning the effectiveness of vaccines that are currently used to protect poultry from bird flu in Asian countries. Now Guan Yi, an expert on the H5N1 virus at the University of Hong Kong, told Reuters that poultry farms in some parts of the world are still using vaccines that don't provide full protection against the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus.

"That vaccine (used in Hong Kong) was made to fight an American strain of the H5N2, and it is very distant from the Guangdong strain of the H5N1 virus here," he said. "Not that there is an outbreak (in Hong Kong), we assume it is useless."