email I’ve just circulated, re report I’ve belatedly seen from FAO:
Only just seen FAO special issue on wild birds and h5n1.
http://www.fao.org/ag/againfo/subjects/documents/ai/AVIbull033.pdf
Terrible piece of work; very muddled; yet manages to implicate wild birds in spreading h5n1 (including, in simple diagram, to poultry – any proof this has occurred?)
Written by the same sort of committee that designed the camel? – ie some bunch of people contributing a bit here, a little there.
Says certain species of ducks can be infected by AI without clinical signs (surely true of all birds, with regular wild bird flus). Then says some ducks killed by h5n1.
Says migration routes don’t tally with observed spread of h5n1; but also manages to suggest wild birds are responsible anyway. Notes re spread with northward component in July, but nothing re wild birds not migrating at this time – and certainly no overall movement, even of juvenile ducks, in this direction.
Says wild birds made sick/killed by h5n1. And yet, when many birds killed at Qinghai, suggests they can spread h5n1 (so for muddle heads at OIE, dead ducks do fly?) [also says no poultry farms near Qinghai; but not explaining why 20,000 poultry culled in vicinity]
jusdging by this in conclusion, committee clearly included at least one idiot, and idiocy reigned supreme:
Post edited by: martin, at: 2005/11/04 02:03