VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Avian influenza has been found in a duck on a farm in southwestern British Columbia, but the bird appeared to pose little risk to public health, officials said on Friday.
Officials were alerted to the duck on Thursday, and said initial testing indicated it was an H5-type avian influenza virus, but more testing was needed to identify the specific strain, said Dr. Jim Clark of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Health officials around the world have been on the watch for the H5N1 strain of the virus that experts fear may mutate just enough to allow it to be easily transmitted among humans. There are nine known N strains of H5 virus.
Officials said the virus was discovered in routine tests after the bird was sent to them for unrelated reasons by a commercial packing house.
"We do know that the flock that this bird was taken from appears to be healthy, and is for all intensive purposes well," Clark told reporters.
The farm in Abbotsford in the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver has been quarantined and animal health inspectors were visiting farms within a 3-mile (5-km) area, a move officials said was standard procedure after such a discovery.
Officials said the farm where the duck was raised had allowed its birds to be outside of barns, which meant the animal might have come in contact with wild waterfowl that are known to carry the disease.
"The finding of avian influenza in a domestic duck flock is not surprising. Birds are known carriers of the virus that are commonly raised under conditions that they may be exposed to avian influenza viruses carried by wild birds," Clark said.
A sampling program of birds in a different area of British Columbia over the summer found 24 percent tested positive for H5 bird flu, although none of those birds showed signs of being ill and none was carrying the H5N1 strain.
That program was begun because of an outbreak of an H7 type of bird flu in the Fraser Valley last year. That virus spread quickly among farms and eventually caused officials to cull 16 million poultry in the area.
"In this particular incidence, we have no reason to believe that there is a virus that is going to cause any significant risk on this particular farm itself or farms nearby," said Ron Lewis, British Columbia's chief veterinarian.
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