# 2866
Over the past 120 days or so, several stories have come out of China suggesting that outbreaks of the H5N1 virus have struck poultry holdings in different regions of that country.
Officially, these reports have been denied.
China's media, which is state run and tightly controlled, hasn't reported on these incidents. What few reports we've received have come from mostly the dissident press, which admittedly has a strong anti-Beijing bias.
In late November and early December, we began to hear about a significant poultry die off in Jiangsu province. Hundreds of thousands of birds were supposedly involved.
China denied that these deaths were due to bird flu. Later, they allowed that routine testing had turned up a `mutant H5N1' virus in healthy, asymptomatic birds in Jiangsu. But that it had resulted no bird deaths.
Here are just three blogs from early and mid December on this reported outbreak.
Dissident Press Coverage Of Jiangsu Outbreak
Confusion And Silence Surround Jiangsu Outbreak
China Denies Bird Deaths From Bird Flu
In late January and early February, dead infected chickens and other birds began washing up on the shores of Hong Kong's Lantau Island, prompting many officials in Hong Kong to suspect there was an unannounced outbreak of bird flu in Guangdong Province.
This report is just one of many that appeared in February, suggesting there was some kind of cover-up of Bird Flu in China. Other reports, carried by Time Magazine and Newsweek, voiced similar concerns.
Deadly tide of birds fuels fears of bird flu cover-up - Feature
Posted : Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:29:59 GMT
Author : DPA
Hong Kong - For more than a week now a deadly tide has been washing out of China into the sea surrounding Hong Kong, bringing with it growing fears that China is in the grip of a covered-up bird-flu outbreak. With each day that passes, more dead birds, ducks and chickens washed up on the beaches of Hong Kong, suggesting that H5N1-infected birds may have been dumped into the China's polluted Pearl River and carried by the tide to Hong Kong waters.
Additional coverage of these allegations can be read here:
Time: Is China Making Its Bird Flu Outbreak Worse?
Hong Kong Continues To Find Infected Birds
China Denies H5N1 Outbreaks In Poultry
Several days ago, New Tang Dynasty TV, and the Epoch Times (both dissident media outlets owned by the Falun Gong) have reported on what they are calling a major outbreak of bird flu in Wuhan.
Dissident Media: Massive Cull In Wuhan?
And earlier this week, Reuters reported a steep downturn in the sale of chicken feed in China, suggesting a major depopulation in their poultry flocks.
Bird flu, rural downturn ravage China poultry numbers
Tue Mar 3, 2009 4:42am GMT
By Niu Shuping and Tom Miles
BEIJING, March 3 (Reuters) - The impact of bird flu and the economic slowdown may have cut China's poultry numbers by about a third or more in the last month, executives in the poultry feed industry said on Tuesday.
See More On The Chinese Bird Flu Mystery for more information.
Today, Bloomberg News has an interview with China's chief veterinary officer, Jia Youling, who publicly worries that animal diseases pose a `grave threat' to China this year.
He cites the one officially acknowledged bird flu outbreak this year, in Xinjiang province, but glosses over any others.
This from Bloomberg.
China Faces ‘Grave’ Threat From Animal Disease, Top Vet Says
By William Bi
March 6 (Bloomberg) -- China, the world’s biggest meat and poultry producer, faces high risks of animal disease outbreaks this year as new strains emerge and cases of bird flu rise, the country’s top veterinarian said.
“Problems with animal diseases are grave” compared with last year, Jia Youling of the Ministry of Agriculture said in an interview in Beijing yesterday. A higher number of bird flu outbreaks in and around China and a new variant of foot-and- mouth disease are the biggest threats, he said.
China’s flagging economy has already slowed demand for meat and poultry, crimping sales of animal feed. Threat of disease has prompted farmers to cut hog and fowl numbers, further reducing demand for soybeans and corn, the main ingredients in feed.
“Disease outbreaks have been sporadic so far,” which doesn’t indicate any epidemics, Jia said. Still, the so-called type A foot and mouth disease is a challenge to deal with as no vaccines are commercially available, he said. Last month Shanghai veterinarians culled 440 cows after an outbreak of the type A foot-and-mouth disease.
Bird flu outbreaks have also risen this year with authorities in Hetian district of the remote northwest Xinjiang province culling over 13,000 domestic fowl in February after an outbreak of the H5N1 strain.
Migrating wild birds are the main carriers of bird flu viruses, and outbreaks in neighboring countries can easily be spread to China, Jia said while attending the annual parliament meeting in Beijing yesterday.
From our vantage point, half a world away, it is very difficult to peer into a country like China and discern exactly what is going on there.
Dissident reports are worrisome, but they must be taken with a certain degree of skepticism. Boxun news and the Epoch Times would like nothing better than to give Beijing negative publicity.
The preponderance of evidence, however, suggests that China is dealing with increased outbreaks of the H5N1 virus in their poultry holdings.
Exactly how serious or widespread that is, is impossible to know right now.
