Moscow region poultry farms, which provide most of Moscow's poultry meat, scrambled on Thursday to prevent the bird flu virus from spreading from the neighboring Tula region.
The country's chief epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, insisted that the Tula outbreak, which was confirmed late Wednesday, posed no threat to people or poultry supplies in the capital or the Moscow region.
"The mass death of poultry has been registered in the Tula region. The culling of birds is under way and will finish" later in the day, Onishchenko said Thursday. "People are undergoing medical examinations. At the moment, there is no danger to people."
Laboratory tests conducted by Rosselkhoz, the Agriculture Ministry agency that oversees produce and meat, detected the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu in samples taken from the Tula region village of Yandovka, where hundreds of chicken, geese and ducks died suddenly earlier this week.
No cases of humans contracting the virus have been reported in Russia. But the confirmation of the virus only 350 kilometers south of Moscow was the first time that it had been discovered in European Russia. The virus was found in seven Siberian regions last summer.
Onishchenko said there was no need to impose a ban on poultry supplies to Moscow and the Moscow region. "That is all nonsense. The outbreak was registered on private farms that are far from [the city of] Tula, not to mention Moscow," he said.
Onishchenko also said supplies of poultry from the Tula region would continue uninterrupted. "Eating this poultry is safe. It poses no harm to anyone, but you should not eat it raw," he said, Interfax reported. Scientists believe the virus can be transferred from live birds to humans but cannot be transferred from cooked poultry.
Farms in the Moscow region began spraying workers and vehicles with disinfectants and limiting workers' contact with birds on Thursday, said Viktor Olkhovoi, deputy head of the Moscow city government's food department. "Chicken are being kept strictly indoors as a precaution, and birds flying over the farms are being shot," Olkhovoi said.
Tatyana Grachyova, a veterinarian with the Petelinka poultry giant, based in the Moscow region's Odintsovo district, said the farm was closely following state regulations.
"We are enforcing all measures as mandated by law," Grachyova said, refusing to elaborate.
Olkhovoi said that Moscow region poultry farms provided the capital with some 100,000 tons of fresh, cooled poultry every year. Frozen poultry arrives from other regions and from abroad, he said.
"If a ban on supplies is imposed, we will be able to organize imports of poultry from other Russian regions and from abroad, mainly from Belarus," Olkhovoi said.
He said Belarus provided assistance ut after poultry supplies from the Moscow region were disrupted on May 25, when parts of the capital and the Moscow, Tula, Ryazan and Kaluga regions suffered a power outage brought on by a fire and equipment failure at a Moscow power station. Some 300,000 birds at Petelinka suffocated in their enclosures, deprived of any ventilation.
Moscow now has a stockpile of 75,000 tons of poultry.
On Thursday, the European Union said it was extending a ban on the import of poultry and feathers from Siberia to cover the whole Russia.
Onishchenko called the measure unnecessary since the EU "does not import poultry from Russia, while Russia imports some 60 percent of its domestic consumption."
He urged the EU to cooperate with Russia in monitoring wild migratory birds. He suggested that the Yandovka birds contacted the disease from migratory birds that landed on the surface of two nearby lakes.
The H5N1 virus, which first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997, can pass directly from birds to people and appears to be spreading through migrating birds. It has killed at least 61 people in Asia since 2003, and the latest victim died in Thailand on Thursday.
Tula's chief epidemiologist, Lidiya Shishkina, said that all of the 3,000 or so birds in Yandovka would be culled and that the village's 200 residents would receive compensation.
The emergence of bird flu so close to Moscow does not appear to be worrying residents. Rostik's, the fried chicken fast-food chain that uses poultry from the Moscow region, said it had not noticed any drop in business. "We think the situation is a far cry from the one in Asia," said Valeriya Silina, the communications director for Rostik Group.
She said Rostik's rigorously tested all supplies and treated its meat at temperatures of over 100 degrees Celsius, which would kill any trace of the virus.
Major supermarket chains, including Ramstore, Perekryostok and Paterson, also have not seen any drop in demand for poultry, Interfax reported.
Staff Writer Kevin O'Flynn contributed to this report.
Russian health officials have confirmed the deadly bird flu virus in a village south of Moscow, the first time the virus has been reported in the European part of Russia. The virus has apparently been spread by migratory birds from regions in Siberia.
Officials have declared a quarantine around the village of Yandovka in a region south of Moscow where over 200 domesticated birds have died on several poultry farms.
Tests show the virus is the deadly strain known as H5N1 that originated in Southeast Asia.
Authorities have ordered that all poultry on the seven affected farms be killed, and have set up a quarantine around the village.
Gennady Onishenko, the Chief Sanitary Inspector in Russia, says all livestock in the area will be destroyed in the next 24 hours, and that disinfecting measures are being taken.
He says that vaccinations against standard human flu are also being administered to people throughout the region of Tula where the outbreak occurred. Tula is located just to the south of Moscow.
Scientists say injections may help prevent the bird flu from forming a hybrid strain with the standard flu that could be much more dangerous.
Bird flu was first reported in six districts of Siberia in July, but this is the first time the virus has reached the area of Russia west of the Ural Mountains.
Officials say the virus is being carried by wild ducks or other waterfowl as they migrate to the west and south.
So far there have been no human casualties reported in Russia from the virus, which has killed scores of people in southeast Asia.
However scientists say it might mutate into a more transmittable strain that could result in a widespread pandemic around the world.
A new outbreak of avian flu has been detected in Russia's south Urals region of Chelyabinsk, the Interfax news agency reported early Saturday quoting emergency officials.
According to the emergency ministry spokesman, 31 birds in the Sunaly village had already succumbed, and in six cases the bird flu diagnosis had been confirmed.
A Russian agriculture ministry official said Friday that the risk of the lethal strain of avian flu rearing its head in Moscow or its surrounding area was "minimal", despite an outbreak in Tula, 300 kilometres (188 miles) south of the capital.
Veterinary services said Friday they suspected that the bird flu virus had now spread to 24 areas, of which 20 were in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia, three in the Kurgan region of Siberia and one in the southern region of Stavropol, though tests were still ongoing.
In all, fowl in seven areas of Russia have been affected by the virus, which was first discovered in July.
Migratory birds had apparently carried the virus to Siberia from southeast Asia, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of fowl and quarantine measures.
The Tula village of Yandovka, where the lethal H5N1 strain of the virus which has killed 61 people in southeast Asia since 2003 was found, has been quarantined for three weeks with all poultry there being killed and burned.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - As migrating waterfowl begin winging their way toward the warmth of the Middle East, this Persian Gulf nation -- with a coastline and wetlands that host millions of wintering birds -- is bracing for the arrival of ducks and geese carrying the dreaded bird flu virus.
"We can't sleep, I'm telling you," Majid Al Mansouri, who heads the country's bird flu campaign, said Thursday.
Across the Middle East, countries are stockpiling vaccine and medication, banning poultry and live bird imports, and going on high alert.
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has devastated poultry stocks and killed 61 people in Asia, where another death from the disease was confirmed Thursday in Thailand. The disease has spread to birds in Europe, where it has been confirmed in Turkey and Romania in recent weeks, as well as in Russia.
Now the birds blamed for bringing H5N1 to Turkey are headed across the Middle East into Africa.
Half a million birds winter here every year, from enormous eagles to tiny warblers. The rest pass through on their way from Siberia and Central Asia to southern Africa.
The Emirates government has enlisted a special weapon: the legions of bird watchers on the lookout for the 300 species and 2 million migrating birds that spend time in the region.
"We're keeping an eye on the birds coming in so we can report on any that are sick and dying," said Peter Hellyer a bird enthusiast with the Emirates Bird Records Committee.
Government inspectors have fanned out to check poultry farms, halt sale of live chickens and force people who own a few chickens or ducks to slaughter and eat them now or hand them over for destruction. Al Mansouri said many had already been killed. The country, like others in the Gulf, has imported tons of disinfectant and 4 million doses of anti-viral medication.
The H5N1 bird flu strain is easily spread among birds, but difficult for humans to contract. Scientists are worried, however, the strain could trigger a pandemic by mutating into a form easily transmitted between humans.
In the Emirates, there is already cause for concern. Earlier this week, five rare Socotra Cormorants were found dead on the coast of the northern Ras al-Khaimah emirate. And Thursday the corpse of a honey buzzard turned up in Abu Dhabi. All appeared to have died of natural causes, Al Mansouri and Hellyer said.
Al Mansouri's Environmental Agency of Abu Dhabi has identified about a dozen potential hotspots in the Emirates where people, migratory birds and domestic birds, such as chickens, live in close contact.
These are the sandy islands and salt marshes strung out along the coast of the emirates of Abu Dhabi, Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah; the Dubai Creek and Al-Warsen lakes in Dubai; the Khor al-Beidah lagoon in Umm al-Quwain emirate, and avian stopovers in the desert oasis city of Al Ain. Neighboring Oman hosts similar numbers of migratory birds, Hellyer said.
Specific species attract particular concern. One is the Great Black-headed Gull, due to arrive in early December from East Asia, Hellyer said.
"They're believed to be carriers," he said. "We'd like to catch some when they get here."
Bird watchers are also monitoring migrant ducks, including the Common Teal, now arriving from Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Central Asia -- including regions where H5N1 made recent appearances.
Reports of sick and dying Teal in Iran this week caused a scare, but tests found no signs of H5N1.
Elsewhere in the region, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia are enacting similar measures, inspecting farms and banning poultry imports. Kuwait and Lebanon are seeking a ban on hunting of birds.
"We are trying our best to vaccinate our bird population here," said Sameer Khalfan at the Health Ministry in Bahrain, an island nation visited by more than 200 species of birds.
Kuwait has not vaccinated flocks, but will when the disease appears. The Ministry of Public Health is retooling plans prepared during the 2003 invasion of Iraq for dealing with biological or chemical weapons.
Elsewhere, countries are taking similar measures:
HOW THEY DIFFER
Death toll Avian flu has infected 118 people and killed 61 worldwide since 1997. The 1918 flu pandemic killed 20 million to 50 million people in 1918-1919. About half the world's 1.8 billion people were infected. About one-fourth of the United States' 104 million residents were infected; 675,000 died.
Transmission The avian flu strain has infected a huge number of birds, but a relatively small number of people. Direct contact with infected poultry, their feces or contaminated surfaces is considered the main route of human infection. This suggests it does not spread easily to humans. By comparison, the 1918 flu spread rapidly from person to person.
Differing subtypes Avian flu is classified as an H5N1, while the 1918 flu was an H1N1, virus. Most people have some immunity to the 1918 subtype, but not to the avian H5N1 virus, which has never widely circulated among humans.
SOME SIMILARITIES
Origin in birds Both strains probably began in wild aquatic birds. The 1918 strain mutated so that people could infect each other.
Symptoms Both types have produced normal flu symptoms of fever, nausea, cough, sore throat, aches and diarrhea. Many patients develop severe pneumonia. Dark spots appear on cheeks and patients turn blue, suffocating from a lack of oxygen as lungs fill with a frothy, bloody mucus. Both have resulted in a high death rate.
CONCERNS FOR THE FUTURE
Viral mutation Avian flu could mutate into a new strain against which humans have little or no immunity. This could happen quickly if the avian strain exchanged genetic material in a human or pig infected by another virus strain. The avian flu also could change gradually on its own in humans, resulting in a new strain that spreads among people.
Rapid spread With international travel, the virus could spread quickly to all parts of the world, outstripping supplies of antiviral vaccines.
Source: World Health Organization, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "The Great Influenza," by John M. Barry (Penguin, 2005).
'Is Tamiflu A Prescription For Survival?'
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Further down this page, you'll also find a comprehensive selection of the finest books on Urban Survival and Survival in the City. You can also click on the Amazon.com button under each of these titles to read extracts from, or reviews of them, or to place an order.
This expertly-written book on Survival Skills in the City, by John Wiseman, author of the bestselling 'SAS SURVIVAL HANDBOOK' and survival skills instructor for the famed British SAS Regiment, will equipt you for survival in the toughest environment of all - the urban jungle!
"Now you can own your own copy of the famed and superb SAS SURVIVAL HANDBOOK, 569 pages of expert survival information, skills and techniques, complete with masses of clear illustrations, and written by John Wiseman, for 26 years survival instructor for Britain's famed Special Forces SAS Regiment.569 pages, outsize paperback.This is the most useful book of its kind that we have ever seen, equally instructive both to those experienced in survival in the outdoors and the ways of the wilderness as well as to the complete novice.
This amazingly comprehensive manual covers:
and much more!
- survival preparation and strategies
- edible wild foods
- fires and shelters
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- tracking skills
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- secrets of navigation
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- survival afloat
- rescue techniques,
- arctic and cold-weather survival, techniques and skills
This is the finest survival instruction and reference guide available. These techniques were taught to elite commando troops who were trained to carry out isolated, arduous operations all over the world; resupply was frequently impossible, requiring them to live off the land.
It will sharpen your abilities, enhance your personal range of options in any emergency or survival situation, and increase your confidence tremendously.
This book will give you expert instruction in the complete spectrum of wilderness skills, and could save your life! Ideal for hunters, fishermen, canoeists, campers, climbers, prospectors, wilderness travellers, military, militia and rescue personnel etc., and for those who wish to learn how to stay alive in the wilderness, and in rough country, and to survive under any conceivable set of circumstances. "
"One of the finest and best-selling of independent-living books - we can't recommend this modern classic too highly!
Whether you want to learn useful rural, homesteader or "back-to-the-land" survival skills, acquire invaluable money-saving or food-raising and preserving techniques, or to use and enjoy the astonishing wealth of over 1,000 recipes and hundreds of proven tips for cutting your personal living costs or becoming more self-reliant, or you just want regular access to Carla Emery's unparalleled storehouse of experience and advice on everything related to self-sufficient living, this is a book that you must have!
This amazing 864 page volume, now in its ninth printing, is the result of an extraordinary fusion of Carla Henry's vast experience in every area of self-reliant living with the feedback and comments [many of which are reproduced in the book] of her more than thirty thousand readers around the world. The book, in consequence, is an invaluable treasure-trove of well-tested, practical and ingenious recipes, formulas, ideas and advice. Whether you live in the city or the country, you'll find yourself consulting Carla Henry's 'Encyclopedia Of Country Living' frequently and profiting by it - or just sitting down and reading it for sheer pleasure! It is perhaps the most comprehensive resource available on the topics it covers.
You'll learn:
"If you're dreaming about moving "back to the land" someday, or if you're already there and want to live more self-sufficiently [wherever you may be] you'll want a copy of the ninth edition of 'The Encyclopedia of Country Living'...We think you're pretty swell, Carla." - Organic Gardening
"Carla Emery is certifiably one of the craziest, warmest, [sometimes unintentionally] funniest, wisest, most lovable, and idealistic zanies now walking the face of the earth and we think this old world would be a lot better off if we had a few more people like her." - Mother Earth News
We couldn't agree more, and we urge you to add this one-of-a-kind telephone book-sized treasury of earthy, folksy and wise country wisdom to your own library, while you still can! You'll save a lot, you'll learn a lot, end you'll be endlessly informed, intrigued, amused and edified by its seemingly-inexaustible and ever-useful contents.
Outsize paperback; 864 pages
And it seems that we're not alone in our high opinion of this superb modern classic!
What reviewers across America thought of this superb reference and instructional resource book:
"It is a superb reference book, better than any number of those that pretend to teach you survival skills by concentrating on just a few crafts." - Survival Tomorrow
"This is really an encylopedia and, like a good encyclopedia, the narrative is clear and complete, the illustrations are plentiful and the whole thing is thoroughly indexed. You can spend a fortune on a library of neo-pioneer books or you can buy "BACK TO BASICS" - Times & World News, Roanoke, Va.
"If you're going to go back to the good old days you'll need some the good old days didn't have...an instruction manual." - Cincinnati Enquirer
"Open the book at any page and there's something of interest." - Chicago Sun-Times
"...it would be an asset to anyone's personal library at home. We recommend it highly." - Kansas City TimesFrom the Introduction:
"'Back To Basics' is a book about the simple life. It is about old-fashioned ways of doing things, and old-fashioned craftsmanship, and old-fashioned food, and old-fashioned fun. It is also about independence - the kind of down-home self-reliance that our grandparents and great grandparents took for granted, and that we moderns often think has vanished forever, along with supermarket tomatoes that taste good, packaged bread that does not have additives, and holidays that are not commercialized.In a period of terrorism, war, and increasing oil and gasoline prices, with the disruptions, shortages, and inflation which are likely to result, that last paragraph reminds us that we may all have an increasing need for improved personal survival, budgetary, and independent-living skills over the next few years! This is an essential book that anyone concerned with saving money and with deveoping practical living-skills must have.At its heart 'Back To Basics' is a how-to book packed with hundreds of projects, step-by-step sequences, charts, tables, diagrams, and illustrations to help you and your family reestablish control over your day-to-day lives. The book is organized into six main sections. The first deals with shelter, the second with energy, the third with raising food, the forth with preserving food, the fifth with home crafts, and the sixth with recreation. The subjects presented lead in logical sequence along the way stations on the road to self-sufficiency. An added feature, "Sources and Resources," lists suggestions for further reading plus names of suppliers of hard-to-find equipment.
Practical, useful information is provided on just about every skill and handicraft under the sun. You will learn how to make your own cheese, raise your own chickens, harvest your own honey, generate your own electricity, and brew your own applejack. You will be able to try your hand at blacksmithing, broom-making, and stone masonry. You will discover how to make soap, tan a hide, build an igloo, heat with wood, smoke a salmon, and create your own cosmetics. Some projects are difficult and demanding - building a log cabin or installing a solar water heating system are tasks for someone with experience, skill, and a strong back. But most of the jobs are well within the capabilities of the average person, and many are suited for family participation, especially for the kids.
While 'Back To Basics' is a book for doing, it is also a book for dreaming. There is no need to run out and start baking adobe bricks in order to enjoy learning the ins and outs of adobe construction. [It might even set you thinking about putting up your own adobe home someday]. Similarly, your imagination is apt to be fired by the interviews with folks around the country who are already practicing the skills and crafts described in 'Back To Basics'. Among others, you will hear from a husband-and-wife team who built a log cabin in Alaska, some suburban kids who raise goats and pigs in their backyard, a city worker who specializes in urban gardening, and a New Hampshire artisan who is keeping alive the Indian art of building birchbark canoes. There are also descriptions of by-gone ways of doing things: the technique of pitsawing, the Indian way of smoking a deer hide and making jerky, the inner workings of a water-powered gristmill. These - along with the historical background of each skill and charming old prints that illustrate many of them - make for fascinating reading.
Americans are a contradictory people. No nation has ever moved further from the harsh realities of wilderness existence. Yet. paradoxically, no nation has clung more tenaciously to its early ideals - to the concept of personal independence, to the mystique of the frontier, to the early pioneers' sense of rugged self-reliance. It is as if somewhere, deep in the American spirit, there has always lurked a distrust of the very technology that we, more than any other people, have spawned. Perhaps this distrust was an accident, but perhaps it was fate; for in the light of recent events that have called into question our easy dependence on modern technology, it seems to have been prophetic. Americans have long yearned for a return to basics; now, suddenly, it has become a necessity. 'Back To Basics' can do much to guide the way."
This is an absolutely essential book if you wish to increase your self-reliance and personal survival skills, as well as provide yourself with an essential reference and how-to resource in preparation for any future food or energy disruptions and shortages. We urge you to order your own copy quickly to be sure of obtaining one! This is an ideal companion to the equally-essential, bestselling 'ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COUNTRY LIVING' [see above].
Take this opportunity to add the superb, comprehensive, and invaluable 'BACK TO BASICS' to your survival, independent-living, or home library!"
Large hardback; 456 pages pages
