Great, just what we need on top of everything else.
Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon ordered Thursday the culling of all fowl in a three kilometer radius of the northern town of Binyamina.
Simhon’s order comes following the earlier detection of a deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in a Binyamina kindergarten petting zoo.
According to Professor Shmuel Rishpon, chair of the Health Ministry’s epidemiology and immunization steering committee, the virus generates a fatal disease for humans. However, no one is believed to be at risk at this point.
The strain was detected in the petting zoo of a kindergarten in which 60 children are enrolled. None of the children are believed to have come into contact with the fowl.
Last Friday, the kindergarten teacher found three dead chickens in the coop, and called in a local veterinarian, who took virologist samples from the chickens and passed them on to the Agriculture Ministry.
On Wednesday morning, 18 out of the 25 chickens were found dead and laboratory findings indicated that the cause was indeed the deadly bird flu.
The rest of the fowl were put to death Thursday and the area is currently being disinfected.
The Health Ministry said in response that the chickens were held in an enclosed cage and that no one is said to have come into contact with them, apart from the poultry farmer who removed their corpses.
The farmer, his relatives, and additional workers of the coop who have come into contact with the infected chickens in the past week have been prescribed anti-viral medication.
Health Ministry officials further stressed basic instructions for the prevention of the virus. Instructions include food products that have been bought in licensed stores, washing hands before and after the treatment of poultry, cooking chicken in a temperature of over 70 degree centigrade and eating only hard-boiled eggs.
Of course, this isn’t the first time bird flu has been detected in Israel. So I don’t think anyone should be pressing the panic button just yet.
Meanwhile, it looks like someone over at the JTA is trying to be funny.
Israeli authorities scrambled to contain a suspected outbreak of bird flu.
