Welcome to Doves Above B.I.Z.
Business Information Zone
for white dove release businesses and bird handlers.
Why this Site?
Need
This site fulfills a need within the white dove release business for easily accessible information about the looming threat of avian influenza.
Unique Concern
I wasn't too concerned about West Nile virus when it came to the country.
I figured that it would blow in, do some damage to susceptible birds and individuals, then calm down and live nicely in the background like most good diseases.
However, this highly pathogenic version of H5N1 does have me concerned.
Common Cold for Ducks & Poultry:
We have known about avian influenza for almost 130 years.
It is like the common cold of waterfowl-- lots get it, suffer only mildly, then recover.
Like the common cold, avian influenza always exists at a low level in the population
of waterfowl and other birds (1-3% of wild ducks carry it).
When domestic poultry get infected with H5N1 they, too, may show signs similar to a human 'cold'-- mild or moderate symptoms with
a reduction in egg production noted.
Deadly Threat:
However, influenza viruses mutate, and within a poultry flock
AI can mutate into a nasty version, sometimes called "fowl plague" or more recently "chicken ebola".
This nasty version will kill 75-100% of domestic fowl (chicken, turkey), often within 2 days of exposure
and thus is called highly pathogenic avian influenza (hpAI).
HPAI is a serious concern for poultry producers.
Over the past 100 years, we have had 3 outbreaks in the US-- most recently in Texas 2004.
The outbreak in Pensylvania 1983-1984, took over 1 year and $70 million to eradicate,
and forced the depopulation (slaughter) of 17 million birds.
Mutated Virus Spreads
In December of 2004, a new strain of hpAI appeared and eradication efforts were unable to wipe it out.
It is easily transfered in live birds, chicken crates, manure used for fertilizer, and on shoes and tires, so while
local eradication efforts would be successful, the virus would pop up somewhere else, carried along lines of transportation.
Virus gone WIld
HPAI was never known to be an issue with wild birds--
AI was a disease of poultry, that occasionally infected a wild bird. But in April 2005,
more than 6,300 wild birds died. This outbreak began at Quinghai Lake nature preserve in China.
This ominous event forcasted a new threat.
hpAI would now be spreading along migratory pathways, carried by wild birds.
Now new populations would be exposed.
Zoo tigers contracted hpAI.
A domestic cat that ate infected birds got hpAI and died.
Cats had never before been considered susceptible to influenza A, so clearly, this H5N1 mutation was like nothing we had seen before.
HPAI spread to Africa, the Middle East, Eastern and Western Europe.
As the disease spreads, new human populations are exposed and the human death toll continues to rise.
Americans Await the Arrival
The USGS, FWS, and DNR agencies are screening wild birds.
Efforts are particularly strong in Alaska, where birds from Asia often appear and mingle with birds that migrate to or thru
the continental US. It is only a matter of time before hpAI arrives in the U.S.
With luck, the disease will behave like any good disease and the virus will lose some of its virulence,
but I suspect that will not happen for some time-- perhaps 2 or 3 years.
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