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  Channel NewsAsia 15 Nov 05
Some 100 dead pigeons spotted at Clementi Ave 1
By May Wong

SINGAPORE : Residents spotted some 100 dead pigeons at Block 406, Clementi Avenue 1 on Tuesday morning and called the MediaCorp News Hotline.

When Channel NewsAsia's news team arrived, the dead pigeons had already been cleared.

But present at the scene were officers from the National Environment Agency's Quick Response Team. They were teaching the estate's cleaners what to do in order to dispose of the dead pigeons in the correct manner.

According to the West Coast-Ayer Rajah Town Council, the dead pigeons were the result of a routine culling exercise. - CNA /ct

Channel NewsAsia 15 Nov 05
Over 50 birds die in British quarantine from bird flu

LONDON : Fifty-three finches from Taiwan have died at a British quarantine centre amid an outbreak of the most deadly strain of avian flu, the government said. The birds, southeast Asian mesias, died last month of the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 strain, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said Tuesday.

"Only the mesias were infected with H5N1 and 53 out of 101 birds died," it said in a statement.

The department also said it was not possible to know if a parrot from Surinam, which also died, had in fact been killed by the same virus, as the tissues of the two species were pooled during testing.

However it said this possibility appeared unlikely.

"Infection with H5N1 was transmitted between the mesias, but there is no evidence of transmission to other species in the facility," a quarantine centre in Essex, it said.

The birds were part of a mixed consignment of 148 parrots and soft bills that arrived from Surinam on September 16. They were joined in the quarantine facility by 216 birds from Taiwan on September 27.

"The original identification of HPAI H5N1 on October 21 was made from a pool of tissues derived from a Pionus parrot (Surinam) and a mesia (Taiwan)," the department said. "It has not been possible to say whether the virus isolated came from the parrot tissue or the mesia tissue or both. However, in the light of the other evidence the balance of probabilities is that the source was the mesia sample."

All of the remaining birds in the quarantine have since been culled, according to DEFRA.

DEFRA spokesman Matt Conway told AFP that there was no cause for concern over the parrot and mesia samples being mixed. "It's not unusual for this type of procedure to be carried out because they shared the same air space. So it's not a worry from that perspective because science will say this is standard practice and a recognized procedure," he said.

Local environment minister Ben Bradshaw said "it was an innocent mixup" when interviewed on BBC television.

Bradshwaw meanwhile denied a newspaper report that any of the infected birds had escaped. "There is no evidence following an exhaustive investigation... that any birds were either released or left out of this quarantine early," Bradshaw told BBC television.

Avian flu is highly infectious among both wild and domestic birds but so far humans have only caught the H5N1 strain after coming into close and prolonged contact with birds carrying the virus.

The virus has killed more than 60 people and devastated poultry stocks in southeast Asia. Health officials have warned that should the virus mutate so it can be transmitted directly from human to human, it could spark a global human flu pandemic capable of killing millions, similar to what happened in 1918.
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Related articles on Global issues: Bird Flu
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