Officials keep eyes on state’s poultry The goal: to be ‘as prepared as possible’ for avian flu

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BANGOR – As the country of Jordan was added Monday to the ever-growing list of those with reported cases of the highly pathogenic avian influenza, Maine officials continue to monitor closely the state’s massive poultry industry.

“It will eventually be here in the U.S.,” Dr. Don Hoenig, state veterinarian, predicted Monday. “But I’m not sure it will be here in Maine.”

Maine is the largest producer of brown eggs in the world, and its poultry industry is conservatively valued at $62 million, concentrated in three communities, Winthrop, Leeds and Turner. But scattered across the state are more than 7 million birds, either hens laying eggs, pullets being raised to lay eggs, backyard poultry flocks or bird fanciers’ collections that could become infected as well.

Eggs are the third-largest agriculture product in the state, and officials continually monitor the industry’s health and well-being.

Those same officials, however, recognize that sooner or later, the deadly virus could show up here.

“We are really putting ourselves in a position to be as prepared as possible,” Hoenig said. “We have been spending a day a week on bird flu prevention and we have been since last fall.”

So far, 47 countries have reported outbreaks of H5N1, the avian flu. Eight of those countries have reported human cases as well. H5N1 is the designation for the particular virus.

There are 15 types of avian flu, but what has public health officials worldwide concerned is that all influenza viruses have the ability to change. Scientists are concerned that the H5N1 virus one day might mutate into a strain that spreads easily from one person to another.

Because these viruses do not commonly infect humans, there is little or no immune protection against them in the human population, and an influenza pandemic, or worldwide outbreak of disease, could begin. Experts from around the world are watching the H5N1 situation in Asia and Europe very closely and are preparing for the possibility that the virus may begin to spread more easily from person to person.

The Maine Department of Agriculture has been working hand in hand with the Maine Department of Health and Human Services on avian and pandemic flu planning. Workshops have been conducted, seminars held and two teams created, one in each department, to “look at the big picture,” Hoenig said.

The big picture has four aspects, he explained. There is seasonal flu that people contract each year; there is the lower pathogenic form of bird flu, or H5N2, which has been in Maine before and has been successfully squelched here and in other states; there is H5N1, which is the avian flu that began 21/2 years ago in Asia and now has spread through the Middle East and into Europe; and there is pandemic flu, which is “human influenza turned bad,” Hoenig said.

Hoenig saw firsthand the effects of H5N2, also known as the fowl plague, in Pennsylvania in the 1980s.

“It started out mild, and then, within six months, it had changed and was killing birds all over the place,” he said. “When I saw what that virus could do, how devastating it could be, well, it has been one of my nightmares for 20 years.

“Now, we’re talking about a different virus, H5N1, that can be passed on to people,” he said. The disease first was detected in the live bird markets of Hong Kong in 1999. “It is the mortality rate of H5N1, at greater than 50 percent, that has us most concerned,” he said.

One of the common ways that H5N1 is spread is through the migration of affected wild birds.

Hoenig said that he isn’t expecting this spring’s migration of wild birds to Maine to be affected. But he said the Pacific flyway into Alaska could be a major problem, that birds passing through Maine this spring en route to Canada could interact with affected birds and then come back down through Maine this fall.

Maine is sampling farm-raised birds already, he said, and is working with Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department to begin a wild bird testing program.

More than a year ago, Maine’s agriculture department started a program for backyard poultry farmers that allows dead birds to be tested at the University of Maine Diagnostic Laboratory in Orono.

“For eight years, we have conducted active surveillance of the state’s poultry industry” he said. “We’ve been testing flocks, 30 birds per flock, 10 days before they were shipped at the end of their laying cycle. Everything has been negative.”

All poultry movements statewide already are monitored through a permit system.

“We know what is coming and going,” Hoenig said. Should H5N1 make it to Maine, the state’s Animal Response Team would be activated and all birds destroyed.