Falconing, along with factory farming, cockfighting, bird-shooting, wild bird trafficking, and keeping caged songbirds, has emerged as a factor in the increasingly rapid global spread of the deadly H5N1 avian influenza.
As the March 2006 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, 92 humans in seven nations had died from H5N1. More than 30 nations had experienced H5N1 outbreaks since 2003, 14 of them since February 1, 2006. Hit, in chronological order, were Iraq, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Iran, Austria, Germany, Egypt, India, France, and Hungary.
More than 200 million domestic fowl have been killed in mostly futile efforts to contain H5N1, according to the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization––almost entirely because of the persistence of practices long opposed by the humane community.
Falconing became implicated when five trained hunting birds died from H5N1 at a veterinary clinic in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Saudi agriculture ministry officials confiscated and killed 37 falcons who were kept at the clinic.
“The virus might have been introduced by illegally imported falcons from China and Mongolia early in the season,” the moderators of the International Society for Infectious Diseases posted to the society’s ProMED online bulletin board.
ProMED zoonotic disease moderator Arnon Shimshony called for “enhancing the alertness of authorities responsible for control of international trade in avians, with special attention to captive birds.
“Earlier H5N1 incidents related to such trade have been recorded in Taiwan, Belgium, the U.K., and probably elsewhere,” reminded Shimshony, who is a member of the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“The report of H5N1 from falcons in Saudi Arabia and their possible infection by smuggled falcons is especially notable when coupled with an earlier incident involving H5N1-infected eagles who were smuggled from Thailand to Belgium,” said Joseph P. Dudley, Ph.D., chief scientist for the EAI Corporation, a Virginia-based private security firm.
“U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service investigations have shown that there is a long-standing and well-established illegal global trade in falcons and other raptors, and that as long ago as 1984, individual falcons caught from the wild could command prices of $10,000 to $50,000 from buyers in Europe and the Middle East,” Dudley continued. “Nonprofit organizations have estimated that the illicit trade in falcons from Central Asia to the Middle East and Gulf states may involve as many as 14,000 or more birds annually, and say that individual falcons of the most sought-after species can bring prices of $500,000 or higher. News reports from October 2004 said that Russian police had intercepted and confiscated a consignment of 127 Saker falcons worth an estimated $4.5 million from a commercial aircraft at a Russian military air base in Kyrgyzstan.”
Agreed World Birdwatch editor Richard Thomas, “There is a lot of smuggling of Sakers from Central Asia to the Middle East, and what are they likely to be fed? I seem to recall that the H5N1-infected mountain hawk-eagles who were smuggled from Thailand to Belgium were believed to have been fed infected chicken before the flight.”
Qatar, neighboring Saudi Arabia, banned traffic in falcons on February 1.
Other nations paid little attention to falconing––but falconing is practicing throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, and may be the missing link that enabled the dominant strain of H5N1 to move laterally across the region to Europe, without spreading to the northern and southern reaches of migratory bird routes.
In terms of numbers of birds involved, routine commerce in poultry dwarfs all other possible H5N1 vectors.
Nigeria banned poultry from residential areas in Lagos, the capital city, on February 16, and banned interstate poultry movements on February 21, after H5N1 appeared in six of the 36 Nigerian states within less than a week.
The Nigerian outbreak, unlike European outbreaks which might have been transmitted by migratory birds, almost certainly was caused by poultry trading.
“I would never rule out wild birds,” Wildlife Conservation Society veterinary epidemiologist William B. Karesh told Washington Post staff writer David Brown. “But I think we have to look at the most probable routes. The most probable would be poultry. “
“There is no question that migratory birds are playing a role, but they are not the main players,” agreed ecologist Peter Marra of the Migratory Bird Center at the National Zoo. Marra told Brown that more attention should be given to the movements of poultry and birds in the pet trade, because “That is where you can actually do something about it.”
“We think someone may have imported or smuggled in contaminated birds,” Nigerian agriculture minister Adamu Bello told the Lagos Guardian.
Noted Brown, “China, Nigeria and the United Nations Food & Agricultural Organization signed a $22.7 million agreement in March 2003 to have 520 Chinese agriculture experts, including poultry technicians, help Nigerian farmers. Nigeria also imported live birds from China until January 2004, when the trade was banned due to H5N1 outbreaks in Asia.”
Bello acknowledged at a news conference that despite the ban, “Birds come every day from China and Turkey.”
#1 migratory species
A similar situation contributed to the resurgence of H5N1 in Indonesia, now second only to Vietnam in numbers of human victims.
As of February 22, 2006, H5N1 had hit 161 communities in 26 of the 33 Indonesian provinces, Agriculture Ministry director of health Syamsul Bachri said. Indonesia killed 16.2 million chickens in 2003, he added, or about 9% of the national flock, without lastingly containing H5N1.
“Almost no region in West Java is free from H5N1,” Fatimah Resmiati of the West Java health office told the Jakarta Post, blaming the fast spread of the virus on poor control of the live poultry traffic.
“Globalisation has turned the chicken into the world’s number one migratory bird species,” said BirdLife International director of science Leon Bennun. “Movements of chickens around the world take place 365 days a year, unlike the seasonal migrations of wild birds,” Bennun noted.
However, H5N1 rapidly crossed several regions where there is little legal commerce in poultry.
“While the overt and covert movements of commercial poultry clearly carry risks,” reminded ProMED moderator Martin Hugh Jones, “we should not forget gladiatorial activities. Cockfighting was the background to the Newcastle disease epidemics in the U.S. Southwest in 2002-2003,” as well as a key factor in spreading H5N1 throughout Southeast Asia in 2003-2004.
Paraphrasing Bahrain SPCA president Dr Khalil Rajab, Geoffrey Bew of the Gulf Daily News reported on February 13 that “Dogs and cockerels are being brought to Bahrain from Southeast Asia to take part in illegal fights, thought to be coming across the King Fahad Causeway from Saudi Arabia or slipped past customs officers at Bahrain International Airport.”
Rajab also mentioned illegal commerce in Southeast Asian birds as pets.
Daniel Foggo and Matthew Campbell of The Times of London on January 22 disclosed that although cockfighting was banned in Britain in 1835, “Villages in northern France where cockfighting is still permitted have become a magnet for day-tripping British devotees of the illegal bloodsport,” an obvious potential vector for H5N1 now that infected birds have been found in that part of France.
H5N1 reappeared in Malaysia in early February for the first time since 2004. Selangor and Federal Territory Poultry Traders Association adviser Dr Lee Chong Meng suggested that the outbreak, in Gombak, might have resulted from villagers smuggling in fighting cocks from Thailand––which caused the last known outbreak, in Kota Baru.