Canada is blocking cross-border shopping for raw poultry, eggs and live birds from another border state, after H5N2 avian flu was confirmed in central Montana on Friday.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Friday expanded restrictions that block travellers to Canada from H5N2-positive states from bringing in live birds, hatching eggs, eggs, yolks, egg whites, feathers, poultry manure, poultry litter, laboratory materials containing poultry products or byproducts, and any poultry meat other than “fully cooked, canned, commercially sterile meat products.”
As of Friday, Canada’s restrictions apply to such products from both Montana and South Dakota, on top of previously announced restrictions on those products from the border states of Minnesota, Washington and Idaho, and from California, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri and Oregon.
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The restrictions also apply to commercial imports of live poultry, birds and raw or untreated poultry products from the specific quarantine zones within the affected states until further notice, CFIA said. Live pet birds may be brought into Canada if they come with official APHIS certification.
CFIA again emphasized Friday there is no food safety risk with the products in question and its restrictions are in place to keep H5N2 from spreading into other parts of Canada.
“Increased mortality”
The restrictions on Montana follow confirmation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of highly pathogenic (“high-path”) H5N2 in a backyard mixed-poultry flock in Judith Basin County, between Great Falls and Billings.
APHIS’ national lab in Ames, Iowa tested samples from the flock after it “experienced increased mortality,” USDA said Friday. State officials quarantined the farm and birds on the property will be “depopulated” to prevent the spread of the disease, the agency said.
Federal and state officials are working jointly on additional surveillance and testing in the nearby area, APHIS said.
APHIS on Friday also announced confirmation of high-path H5N2 in a commercial turkey flock in Nobles County in southwestern Minnesota; in a second commercial turkey flock in Stearns County in central Minnesota; and in a commercial turkey flock in Beadle County in eastern South Dakota.
Both South Dakota and Montana are in the Central flyway, a flight path for migratory birds running from Texas up through the Plains states into Saskatchewan, northeastern Alberta and western Manitoba as well as the Northwest and Yukon territories. — AGCanada.com Network
