Canwest News Service Published: Friday, January 23, 2009
Ian Lindsay
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has quarantined one turkey farm in B.C. and has put a 'restriction movement' order on a number of others within a three kilometre circle of the suspect farm.
ABBOTSFORD, B.C. - Testing began Friday on approximately 23 farms in B.C.'s Fraser Valley after a suspected case of Avian influenza was found on a turkey farm near Abbotsford.
"There's a suspect farm in the Abbotsford area that has been quarantined," the president of the B.C. Poultry Association, Ray Nickel said Friday. "It's a turkey farm. The producer in question had some birds he was concerned about, respiratory-wise. The tests came back that they found a suspect (Avian influenza.")
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has quarantined that operation and has put a "restriction movement" order on a number of others within a three kilometre circle of the suspect farm, Mr. Nickel said.
"The other surrounding farms will be allowed to move product, do their normal business subject to a test that shows their flocks are clean," he said.
Mr. Nickel said "this has nothing to do with human health or product contamination. It is only about bird infections."
However, he said it brings back some bad memories of an Avian influenza outbreak in 2004 when a "highly pathogenetic" H7N3 strain of the disease broke out and 2.3 million birds had to be destroyed.
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