KIZIKSA, Turkey, 13 October 2005 — Turkey said yesterday that it had completed the mass slaughter of fowl to combat a bird flu outbreak in this northwestern village, and while confident the disease had not spread the area remained strictly quarantined. “The mass slaughter of animals is complete,” Agriculture Ministry spokesman Faruk Demirel told AFP.
“Officials are touring the region, checking every house, and culling any animals left behind,” he said, adding that only small-scale slaughter was continuing on some farms. The local governor’s office said that vets had so far slaughtered a total of 5,691 turkeys, chickens, ducks, geese and pigeons in a three-kilometer quarantine zone around a turkey farm in Kiziksa in Balikesir province where the first bird flu case was confirmed at the weekend.
While avian influenza primarily affects birds, one strain of the virus known as H5N1 has killed more than 60 people in South East Asia since 2003. Scientists have warned that millions of people around the world could die if that the virus crosses with human flu strains to become a lethal and highly contagious new disease.
Turkish experts say samples from infected animals have tested positive for the H5 virus, but it was not yet known whether it was the H5N1 strain. If that is the case, it would take the virus to the frontiers of the European Union as well as threaten the Middle East.
A specialist laboratory in Britain is also testing the samples and will have an answer within days, according to the British agriculture ministry. Demirel said they were expecting the results “next week.”
In Kiziksa, 300 kilometers southwest of Istanbul, veterinarians were battling resistance by locals who preferred to eat their fowl rather than hand it over for slaughter, the Anatolia news agency reported. Some agreed to give up their animals only after warnings that those who hid their fowl would face a prison term of up to six months and a hefty fine.
Veterinary officials would also check some 550,000 birds in farms within a surveillance zone of seven kilometers outside the quarantined area here, the Turkish Agriculture Ministry said. Officials had also begun to disinfect the sealed off zone amid warnings that just a gram (0.035 ounces) of droppings from a sick chicken is enough to infect a million others.
Signs erected outside the 18 villages in the quarantine zone warned passengers of the presence of avian flu, as officials disinfected the tires of vehicles leaving the settlement areas. A senior official from the Health Ministry underlined that no human has been infected so far and that the disease has been contained in Kiziksa. “The incident appears to have been localized in that area. There is no need to worry,” Ramazan Gozukucuk, the head of the contagious diseases department told Anatolia.
But experts have warned that the country could face fresh outbreaks elsewhere as it lies on the route of migrating birds which stop at wetlands across the county. The outbreak in Kiziksa is believed to have been caused by migrating birds. They say the virus could also be reintroduced in the spring as birds start migrating from south to north.
Panic has already gripped Turks, the Milliyet newspaper reported, with many rushing off to buy a flu medicine called Tamiflu, the only one to work against avian flu. A total of 28,000 boxes had been sold across the country in four days, drying up stocks in chemists, it added. The EU, which does not import poultry from Turkey, has imposed a ban on live birds and feathers. Several other countries blocked import of Turkish poultry.
Producers have ruled out any major economic fallout from the bans, but may face reduced demand at home as people shy away from poultry meat. Demir Kunter, the head of Turkey’s poultry producers’ association, said that sales had dropped by 40 percent in the country’s biggest city Istanbul since the outbreak.
Meanwhile, the government minister in charge of Ankara’s negotiations said that Turkey’s entry into the European Union will strengthen and enrich the bloc and help turn it into a global power. Unveiling Turkey’s preparations for its EU accession talks, which formally began on Oct. 3, Ali Babacan said Turks too would benefit from rising living standards and greater economic and political stability as full membership nears. “The EU has entered a new powerful stage politically, strategically and economically since Oct. 3, and has moved closer to its goal of becoming a global power,” Babacan told reporters.
Turkish membership, which is not expected before 2015, would also boost the EU’s contacts with the Muslim world, he said. Taking in Turkey, a large but poor, overwhelmingly Muslim country of 72 million people, will extend the EU’s borders to the Middle East. Turkey also boasts the second largest army in NATO after the United States and has strong ties with the Turkic-speaking ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia.
