TORONTO — Tests have confirmed a farm duck in British Columbia has a nonlethal, North American strain of avian influenza but health officials will still cull about 60,000 poultry as a preventive measure, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said on Sunday.
Health officials around the world have been on the watch for the Asian strain of the H5N1 virus that experts fear may mutate so it is easily transmitted among humans and possibly cause a pandemic. There are nine known N strains of the H5 virus.
Initial tests last week found an H5-type strain in the duck during routine tests. Health officials immediately quarantined the farm, located in the Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver.
"This morning test results ... confirmed that the H5 virus found in a domestic duck in British Columbia is the low pathogenic, North American strain," Cornelius Kiley, a CFIA veterinarian, said in a briefing on Sunday. "This confirmation means that we are looking at a virus capable of causing only mild disease, if any at all.
"It also means that we are not dealing with the virus current in Asia and Europe," Kiley added. "This particular subtype is unique to this part of the world and we have previously seen it throughout North America."
Kiley said while there is no immediate risk to domestic birds, the agency will proceed with a cull of about 60,000 ducks and geese on the infected duck's farm. In addition, the CFIA has also quarantined four other "high risk" farms and expects test results within days, he said.
The commercial farm where the latest case of bird flu was found also faced a cull in 2004.
An outbreak of an H7 type of bird flu in the Fraser Valley last year spread quickly among farms and eventually caused officials to cull 16 million poultry in the area.
On Saturday, the CFIA said it had detected the H5N1 virus in two wild ducks in Manitoba but it was not the same deadly strain affecting Asia.
The study also detected versions of the H5N3 virus in Quebec birds and the H5N9 and H5N2 strains in British Columbia birds. None is seen as a public health threat.
Feeds