Hi Werner:
Many thanks for this info.
Just checked Miliband’s blog; see there are already comments asking why he’s blaming wild birds.
I’ve submitted this comment (may take a day before posted, if indeed posted):
Indeed surprising you blame wild birds, when no evidence whatsoever to substantiate this notion.
No wild bird species known to be able to survive and sustain and spread H5N1.
V hard to find a living wild bird with H5N1, which lethal to most creatures it infects; and Dead Ducks Don’t Fly, so aren’t best vectors of flu.
– hence my suggesting the species being blamed is the Tooth Fairy Bird.
I live in Hong Kong – around epicentre of H5N1 (albeit of recent strains, which may have ancestor from UK a few decades ago).
No wild migratory ducks [don’t have geese] yet found here with H5N1. Yet if wild birds were good vectors, shouldn’t H5N1 be rife in our waterbirds?
If H5N1 were in UK’s wild birds, there would be significant mortality. Or, maybe one Tooth Fairy Bird flew from Hungary to Suffolk, right iinto ventilation shaft of the turkey shed, then dematerialised?
If you have your secretary email my secretary (well, email me), I’d be happy to send you copy of paper from Waterbirds, with sound science re wild birds and H5N1.
Armed with science, maybe you can look for real culprit – like, err, a truck from BM’s operations in Hungary.
Martin
Post edited by: Martin, at: 2007/02/08 10:57