The latest outbreak of bird flu, which killed almost 9,000 chickens in the county of Heishan, Liaoning province , has again raised fears that the deadly H5N1 virus could be spread by migratory birds. However, a mainland expert said such fears could be premature.
Mainland authorities yesterday released a report on the October 26 outbreak in which the Ministry of Agriculture's Veterinary Bureau suggested migratory birds should be blamed for the poultry deaths.
According to Xinhua, 20 magpies and other wild birds were also found dead in Heishan county, an area that sits on a migratory bird route between East Asia and Australia.
Yesterday, Agriculture Minister Du Qinglin said that because three of the world's eight migratory bird routes crossed large swathes of China, the authorities should be on alert for the spread of H5N1 as wild flocks passed through their areas. The second major flight path to cross China follows the western Pacific Ocean, while the third stretches from western Asia to India.
The first suggestion that migratory water fowl could be a factor in the global spread of the avian virus was published in May in the journal Science by Chinese scientists Liu Jinhua , Gao Fu and Lei Fumin .
Dr Lei, an ornithologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Zoology, identified H5N1 in samples of dead sparrows, crows and other birds he collected after an outbreak in Qinghai and during other field tests.
Dr Lei yesterday cautioned against an immediate conclusion that migratory birds were the only cause of the Liaoning outbreak.
