ARMENIA, UKRAINE BAN RUSSIAN POULTRY IMPORTS

RIA Novosti, Russia
Dec 17 2007

MOSCOW, December 17 (RIA Novosti) – Armenia and Ukraine have banned
Russian poultry imports following a bird flu outbreak at a poultry farm
in the Rostov Region, south Russia, local officials said on Monday.

Birds at the farm started dying on November 29, and a preliminary
analysis showed traces of the lethal H5N1 virus, which has killed a
total of 207 people across the globe since it was first reported in
Asia in 2003.

A total of 276,000 birds have already been culled at the poultry
farm, and the remaining 224,000 are to be slaughtered in the near
future. Another case of bird flu has also been registered in an area
neighboring the infected farm, an emergencies ministry spokesman said.

As a result of the latest outbreak, Ukrainian authorities have
"temporarily suspended" the import of Russia poultry, and an Armenian
customs official said that "Armenia does not import poultry from
Russia. Nevertheless, as a precautionary measure, its import into
Armenia has been banned."

The current outbreak is the third in Russia this year. The Krasnodar
Territory, which is on the route taken by migrating birds in winter,
was hit by the H5N1 strain in September, and over 200,000 birds were
subsequently culled.

In February, dead poultry containing traces of the lethal virus were
found in Moscow, in eight Moscow Region districts and a district in
the Kaluga Region. All the cases were eventually traced to a single
market in southwest Moscow.

Although no cases of the human-to-human transmission of avian influenza
have been reported, scientists fear that the virus could eventually
mutate into a strain easily passed on from person to person, causing
a global flu pandemic.

In 1918, a flu pandemic killed over 20 million people worldwide.