051129 Don't Be Chicken About Bird Flu, Experts Say

(The Morning Call) - As Thanksgiving approaches in this season of pandemic jitters, the poultry industry and animal rights activists are fighting over a priceless wishbone -- public perception.

Can your succulent holiday bird kill you with the much-dreaded, much-misunderstood avian flu?

Of course not, poultry farmers say. The avian flu strain causing so much consternation these days, H5N1, hasn't reached these shores. Besides, proper cooking kills the flu virus, not to mention salmonella and other bird-borne illnesses.

That hasn't stopped People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other activists from promoting a vision of pandemic flu racing through this country on the back of Tom Turkey.

''Eating meat threatens millions with bird flu,'' PETA says on its Web site. ''Every time you put yourself in contact with or consume animal products, you risk infecting yourself with this or some other deadly virus.''

This is a high-stakes battle -- particularly in Pennsylvania, home to a $700 million-a-year poultry industry. Commercial poultry farms produce 10 million turkeys, 130 million broilers, and 6.6 billion eggs annually.

Those farms belong to a bird flu surveillance network that state and industry officials claim is the nation's best. Farmers annually conduct 240,000 random blood tests on their flocks, eager to prevent the kind of outbreak that led to the ''depopulation'' -- slaughter -- of 15 million sick birds across the central portion of the state in 1983-84.

That was the last major outbreak -- proof the system works, say industry officials. But they are concerned their safe-meat message may get lost in the current anxiety over H5N1. The strain emerged in 1997 and has killed about 70 people across Southeast Asia, all of whom were in close contact with poultry.

What makes H5N1 so worrisome is that it could mutate into a form easily transmissible among humans, perhaps leading to a pandemic similar to the 1918 flu that killed upward of 40 million people.

That mutation has not happened. It may never happen. But PETA, known for its flamboyant and often controversial efforts to draw attention to the plight of animals, has seized on pandemic anxiety to discourage the consumption of poultry, painting commercial farms as filth-strewn breeding grounds for any number of diseases.

''The way the poultry industry operates is a prescription for disease outbreaks,'' said PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich. ''They'll cram 30,000 chickens or 100,000 laying hens into these barns, sitting in their own excrement.''

Christian Herr, vice president of the PennAg Poultry Council, an industry group, dismissed PETA's flu campaign as ''unfortunate'' and said the American system of raising poultry has probably helped limit disease.

''The [poultry] industry in Southeast Asia is significantly different,'' he said. ''You have people living with livestock, birds in and out of homes. The sanitary conditions are significantly different.''

Pennsylvania's reputation as a top flu-fighter has grown steadily since the 1983-84 outbreak. Today, ''there's a very good bio-security program for the state's growers,'' said David Jaindl, manager of the 70- year-old Jaindl Turkey Farms in North Whitehall Township. ''Pennsylvania has always had a very proactive stance in regard to testing. The veterinarians from the state do an extremely good job.''

According to Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff, flu strains are discovered 15 to 20 times a year in commercial flocks and live bird markets and pose little threat to humans.

When flu is discovered, flocks are quarantined. Sometimes, as in the case of a positive test at a live bird market in Philadelphia on Tuesday, the state shuts the operation down.

Herr said safety measures go beyond testing and quarantine. Feed trucks and egg trucks are routinely disinfected. And visitors to poultry farms are required to don protective boots and suits before they get near the flocks.

''That's not just to protect you from birds,'' Herr said. ''It's to protect the birds from you.''

Friedrich disputes that, claiming lax security can be observed at many farms. And he dismissed the notion that cooking meat properly is sufficient defense against illness.

''The industry claims you can't get it by eating cooked meat, but of course you also can't get food poisoning from cooked meat, and yet there are tens of millions of cases annually, because people don't operate their kitchens like biohazard laboratories -- and really, they shouldn't have to.''

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