Health

Email Warned 2 Years Ago of BC Olympic Bird Flu Danger

by con10t | January 27, 2009 at 07:47 am

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B.C. poultry farmers are apparently not being as concertedly vigilant as possible with laborious and costly bio-security measures necessary to contain further outbreaks and spread of the human-acquirable, deadly, H5N1 bird flu virus.

With the B.C. hosted Olympics on their way, any outbreak in poultry could spread this huge health problem cross-Canada and worldwide via any 2010 Olympic Game guests infected, a disastrous consequence and reminder of how crucial bio-security is in Western Canada!

An official with B.C.'s Agriculture Ministry warned the poultry industry two years ago that if farmers didn't take biosecurity measures more seriously the province could face a bird-flu outbreak within months of the 2010 Olympics, something he said would be a "political disaster."

This warning was contained in an email circulated to poultry farmers and industry officials by the B.C. government poultry industry official.

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Terri Potratz

at 09:38 on January 27th, 2009

I've heard that restaurants and catering companies are having a hard enough time as it is securing enough food to feed the masses during the Olympics; if a large portion of our local resources were to become unusable, that would be a disastrous situation indeed.

con10t

at 04:55 on January 28th, 2009

That was actually a main motivation behind the government poultry official's email. What is more scarey is not the economics but the possibility that visitors from all over the world could potentially be infected and after their Olypmic visit fly home and spread the virus around the globe.