A national surveillance program will start looking for avian influenza on Canadian poultry farms this summer.
Christine Power, manager of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s epidemiology and surveillance division, said flocks will be selected at random, and blood samples will be taken from small groups of birds to see if they have been exposed to the disease.
“We are trying to get a sense of what is out there in our different sectors to get an understanding of the status in our own country and compiling with international requirements so that we are all on the same page.”
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Power said the European Union has proposed rules that prohibit the movement of live birds and poultry products from countries that do not have a surveillance program.
Canada ships little processed poultry, but breeding companies export live poults and hatching eggs.
Power said the program is designed to assess bird health and is not a food safety matter.
Avian flu most often appears as a low pathogenic form resembling a mild strain of influenza that tends to run its course in a flock. However, it can quickly mutate into the more deadly, contagious form.
It is this low pathogenic form that the CFIA’s new surveillance program will look for.
When a positive case is detected, the agency will check fecal samples to see if the infection is active. However, it will more likely be the result of a past infection.
Lisa Bishop-Spencer, a spokesperson for Chicken Farmers of Canada, said the program includes preemptive culls, in which flocks suspected of illness are destroyed and tested.
In 2005, a British Columbia duck flock was culled when the low pathogenic form of avian flu was found.
Industry is negotiating compensation for destroyed flocks. The government compensates producers for killed birds but not for cleanup and disinfection.
“Compensation remains an issue, but we can’t stop the progress on surveillance and developing protocols to deal with the virus,” Bishop-Spencer said.
Outbreaks of the more serious form of avian flu in British Columbia in 2004 and on a farm near Regina Beach, Sask., last fall served as a wake-up call for the industry.
“The 2004 situation reminded us that the attention we paid to animal disease in general needed to be heightened and that we had to ensure our biosecurity protocols that we had were adapted for any animal disease,” she said.
Part of the protocol includes the federal government’s traceability plan. As a supply managed industry, the poultry sector keeps records of all producers and the location of their barns. Since 2004, GPS data has been available on all farm locations. If a disease or weather catastrophe occurs, producers can be located quickly with pertinent information.
The CFIA also conducts an annual wild bird survey with public health agencies and the Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre.
It is designed to provide an early warning for highly pathogenic strains of avian influenza and supplies data on characteristics of influenza viruses circulating in wild birds in Canada.
The first survey, conducted in 2005, identified many different influenza viruses. All were low pathogenic and originated in North America.
In 2007, 6,687 live wild birds were checked and 1,343 positive cases were found. Among 2,415 dead birds submitted for testing, 23 had the virus. These cases had low or no potential to cause disease in domestic chickens.
