While state health officials say an avian flu pandemic is an issue of "when" and not "if," that "when" has not come yet, and officials say domestic chicken is completely safe to eat.Those officials say practices used at Alabama poultry farms protect the state from the type of widespread transfer of avian influenza currently taking place in Asia.
Avian influenza occurs naturally in birds, which may carry the virus without ever becoming sick. The virus is very contagious among birds, and infected birds may transfer the virus to domestic birds, making them ill and even killing them. Health officials worry how serious the disease will become when birds are not only transferring the disease to other birds but also to humans.
Currently, transmission of the virus from birds to humans is quite rare. Last year, 117 cases of avian flu were reported in humans, 60 of which were fatal.
According to local physician G. Robert Storey, humans who contract avian flu may develop symptoms similar to the human flu virus, such as fever, cough and muscle aches. More serious symptoms can include eye infection, pneumonia and severe respiratory distress. Testing for human infection is available through health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors offices can take swabs for testing, he said.
Cindy Lesinger, registry and smallpox branch director for the Alabama Department of Public Health, said because the disease is so fatal, it actually has less potential to develop into a pandemic that would affect humans worldwide.
The avian flu currently affecting Asia is the H5N1 strain. Lesinger said the virus appears to be too strong to be transmitted worldwide.
"It’s killing at a high enough percentage that it shouldn’t trigger a pandemic," she said. Because infected humans are dying so quickly, she said infected people have less time to transmit the disease, so the virus is effectively containing itself. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t eventually become weaker and thus more mobile, she said.
"The virus would have to weaken some so the host can transmit it before a pandemic could be triggered," she said.
Ron Sparks, state commissioner of agriculture, said the virus has eluded efforts by Asian health officials because the poultry industry there is less contained.
"In Alabama, we grow our birds under a controlled environment," he said. "Our birds don’t mix and mingle with backyard chickens or migratory birds."
State officials tested more than 91,000 birds of all kinds last year for avian influenza. Of those, 70,000 were domestic chickens, Sparks said.
"We’re beginning to test every flock," he said. "We test 11 chickens out of every flock. We have 13,000 flocks to test, so we will be handling 142,000 to 150,000 additional samples."
So far, no Alabama chickens have tested positive for the virus. If one did test positive, Sparks said all the chickens in that house would have to be culled, and the house sanitized. The virus shows up in birds’ saliva, nasal secretions and feces. The virus can be transferred from one chicken farm to another simply by a small amount of feces carried on a shoe or tire of someone picking chickens up from more than one farm.
Even if the virus were to show up in chickens raised in Alabama, Sparks said consumers should not fear domestic chicken.
"What would happen to someone who was to cook a chicken infected with avian flu?" he said. "If they cooked it real good, nothing. The message is poultry is really safe in Alabama."
Sparks said his agency works closely with poultry farmers to prevent infection in the state’s chicken population because they both have the same goal — to sell safe chickens.
"You’ve got to have consumer confidence," he said. "That’s the market." Alabama ranks behind only Georgia and Arkansas nationally in chicken production. Sparks said any damage to the state’s population would have ruinous effects on the state’s economy, of which poultry farming accounts for $8 billion annually.
With the chances for avian flu to come to the United States through its own chicken population very slim, transmission of the virus is far more likely through people or even pigs.
Although there have been no reports of the virus being transmitted from person to person, Lesinger said it is a matter of "when," not "if" the virus eventually becomes communicable among humans.
"The biggest problem right now is that we don’t know how strong or weak the virus is going to be when it gets here," she said.
If a person infected with human influenza comes in contact with avian flu, most likely at a poultry farm in Asia or Europe, the avian virus could mutate with the human virus, becoming transferable among humans.
State Veterinarian Tony Frazier said that is more reason for people to get a vaccine for influenza. Specifically, anyone who comes in contact with poultry should definitely get a flu shot, he said, which would further narrow the chances of both viruses appearing in the same place and mutating. While no vaccine is available stateside for avian flu, Lesinger expects one to be available within six months to a year.
Pigs are also a potential corridor for the virus to make it into the United States. Lesinger said once a pig contracts the virus from a bird, either in Asia or from an infected migratory bird in the Western Hemisphere, the virus can mutate quickly, with the pig acting as what Frazier calls "a reservoir."
While Lesinger said a vaccine for avian flu is on its way to the United States, if the virus mutates before it makes it here, the vaccine’s effectiveness would be weakened. As viruses mutate, vaccines must be updated, whether for avian or human influenza, much like "the flu shot you took five years ago may not do any good today," Sparks said.
If avian influenza does make its way to the United States, Debra Gaither, deputy director of the Talladega County Emergency Management Agency, said the organization would provide security and traffic control for those seeking treatment or vaccinations at local health departments.
State officials have a stockpile of antiviral medications like Tamiflu and Relenza. Lesinger said indicators lead officials to believe that if a pandemic were to come to the United States, it may go down in the history books with the influenza pandemic of 1918, which experts estimate killed 500,000 people. On average, 36,000 Americans die from the flu. Lesinger doesn’t expect casualties to reach the mark set in 1918, but she said they could be significant.
The Alabama Department of Public Health’s plan predicts that with an influenza pandemic, deaths in Alabama alone could range from 1,778 to 4,146, while as many as 18,000 could be hospitalized and 800,000 people could seek outpatient treatment.
Lesinger said it is vital to the state’s population to develop healthy habits now that could prevent transmission should a pandemic hit the nation. She suggests washing your hands frequently, covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze, and staying away from sick people or others when you are sick.
"Practicing those things will reduce transmission once the virus is here," she said.
