Public Health's Paul Ettestad on the big bird questions.
As the state veterinarian for the New Mexico Department of Health, what is your role when it comes to the bird flu risk for New Mexico?
My main role is risk communication. I try to educate people to avoid public hysteria and educate people so they know what they can do to reduce their risk. I also co-ordinate that message with other state agencies.
Specifically in Santa Fe and northern New Mexico there's a lot of organically produced poultry and products that are not mass-produced. Does that affect, one way or the other, the potential danger for us?
You know, right now the avian flu hasn't made it into the United States. The way that people think it might come is if migratory birds from Asia that share common breeding grounds up in Alaska may pass it to birds in North America and bring it down. There's been extensive surveillance of birds in Alaska-it's been going on for several years-and they haven't found it there yet. So it hasn't made it into any of the wild bird population of the United States. If it does, there is always the risk some of those migratory birds will land in areas where there is domestic poultry that's outside and potentially pass it on that way. So there is the potential in small backyard poultry areas, especially if they're near areas where there are waterfowl, because it seems to be mostly in ducks and geese. Then there would be the potential to pass it on that way. When you look at large commercial poultry operations most of those are housed in big buildings where it's not possible for the wild birds to get in and mix.
Is there anything about northern New Mexico, if the avian flu were to enter the United States, that would make us more-or less-susceptible to a bad outbreak?
Our poultry industry is fairly small compared to other states where they have large production and lots of poultry, so we don't have a lot of domestic poultry here. One thing we do have, though, is one of the bird flyways, a central flyway. Birds come down through the Rio Grande Valley…waterfowl like to be near water, so they would concentrate along the Rio Grande River. If H5N1 was found in Alaska and people started looking along the flyways, which I think they're going to in the next year or two, that's one of the places they'd be looking because of the concentration of that flyway along just a few rivers. So that would be where you would look, that would be where you would be concerned that wild birds could infect domestic poultry and where you would want to concentrate some of your education efforts to let people know they want to cage their birds such that they won't have contact with wild birds.
In terms of that education, does the state government have any sort of regulation for smaller farms?
The New Mexico Livestock Board has jurisdiction over domestic poultry and diseases of domestic poultry and avian influenza is reportable to the New Mexico Livestock Board. You know, there have been other outbreaks in this country of different types of avian influenza that have gone on in the past. Last summer there was an outbreak of H5N2 in Texas and the US Department of Agriculture along with the state livestock people went in and they had to quarantine that farm and they had to euthanize all the birds. They did surveillance in that area to make sure the birds hadn't transferred it anywhere else. And they were able to fairly rapidly eliminate that disease. Now that's hard to do in places in like Asia where you have lots of birds. Here if we were to get it in our domestic poultry we have enough experience with avian influenza I think they'd be able to put out any kind of outbreak in the domestic poultry. Now if it's in the wild birds that's going to be more difficult.
Since cockfighting is legal in New Mexico, could that be an added risk factor for spreading bird flu?
The only potential other than migrating birds bringing the virus into the domestic population is exotic pet birds being smuggled in. I think there was a case in Britain a couple of weeks ago.
Do you know if most cockfighting birds are smuggled in?
I think we have some breeders here in the state. I'm not sure if some are brought illegally into the state-that would just be a hypothetical.
In all honesty, how scared are you?
At this point I'm not very worried at all because it hasn't made it into Alaska yet. I think people are mixing up bird flu with what we call pandemic flu. I think it's good that people are starting to pay attention to pandemic flu and that we're starting to plan for something like that which might happen, which may or may not be due to this bird flu in the future.
What's the difference?
Well, bird flu is a specific type, this H5N1 avian flu which right now is being transferred to bird, and in a few cases from bird to human. What people are worried about is if this virus mutates and changes such that it becomes readily transmissible from person to person and it becomes a sub-type where people's immune system hasn't seen it before and you have a lot of person to person spread and a lot of fatalities. That may or may not happen with this bird flu, but it could potentially happen with all the different types of flu that are out there from year to year. So if that does happen, with our modern transportation system, with people flying around the world, within a day they're someplace else, then you can see the potential for this flu to spread rapidly without adequate ability to produce a vaccine for everybody quickly.
