Russia bans poultry imports from West Virginia in flu scare

MOSCOW - Russia banned all poultry imports from the US state of West Virginia after an outbreak of H5N2 bird flu virus, the agriculture inspection department said.
The ban, which goes into force Friday, will include live birds, eggs, poultry, all kinds of products that did not undergo thermal treatment, as well as bird feed, Interfax news agency cited Rosselkhoznadzor officials as saying.
The agency also called on the United States for full information regarding the situation with bird flu in the country and bird vaccination.
The United States is a major exporter of poultry to Russia.
The H5N2 strain of bird flu can be highly pathogenic to birds, but is not believed by scientists to mutate as fast as the H5N1 strain, which is known to have killed 170 people.
Experts fear that H5N1 will mutate and become easily transmissible from human to human, causing a pandemic like the Spanish flu in 1918 which killed millions of people.

04/05/2007 22:51 GMT