peter@swisinfo
New member
I am absolutely not trying to start a panic here, but I thought you Sea Watchers might be interested in the following article that I found yesterday at:
http://www.flu.org.cn/resources/2005777188.htm
There are two main things that prompted me to post here. The first is that after reading this report, what struck me most was the sentence at the end......
"Increased surveillance of poultry is called for because previous experience has shown that control measures become almost impossible once the virus is entrenched in poultry populations."
This worried me because it seemed to me that focussing on domestic and commercial poultry would be the wrong place to look if you wanted to get an early warning. Indeed the sentence suggests that once the virus was present in poultry populations it would be difficult to do much about it.
Surely the place to look would be at incoming migratory waterfowl.
The second thing was that I had recently come across what appeared to be a sick gull on the beach at Bridlington. I was only mildly concerned at the time, but after reading this I started to wonder............
So, in brief I wondered if I might suggest that the Sea Watchers might like to keep an eye open for sick birds, and especially any "bar-headed geese as well as some brown-headed gulls (Larus brunnicephalus), great black-headed gulls (Larus ichthyaetus) and great cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo)"
http://www.flu.org.cn/resources/2005777188.htm
There are two main things that prompted me to post here. The first is that after reading this report, what struck me most was the sentence at the end......
"Increased surveillance of poultry is called for because previous experience has shown that control measures become almost impossible once the virus is entrenched in poultry populations."
This worried me because it seemed to me that focussing on domestic and commercial poultry would be the wrong place to look if you wanted to get an early warning. Indeed the sentence suggests that once the virus was present in poultry populations it would be difficult to do much about it.
Surely the place to look would be at incoming migratory waterfowl.
The second thing was that I had recently come across what appeared to be a sick gull on the beach at Bridlington. I was only mildly concerned at the time, but after reading this I started to wonder............
So, in brief I wondered if I might suggest that the Sea Watchers might like to keep an eye open for sick birds, and especially any "bar-headed geese as well as some brown-headed gulls (Larus brunnicephalus), great black-headed gulls (Larus ichthyaetus) and great cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo)"