This year’s avian flu outbreak in the Los Altos region of Jalisco was almost certainly not provoked deliberately – as has been suggested in some auraters – but was probably caused by infected migrating birds from Canada, Cesar de Anda Molina, the vice president of the International Egg Commission, said this week in an editorial in El Informador newspaper.
Five lines of investigation are being followed into the source of the outbreak, which decimated 22 million birds in Mexico’s richest poultry region, de Anda said.
According to de Anda, the virus could have laid dormant in the imported Canadian birds for as long as three or four years. He said the bird flu outbreak has cost the industry around nine billion pesos.A fund of just over 200 million pesos will assist poultry farmers who were forced to sacrifice birds as a mere precaution.
De Anda noted that the poultry farms located outside Los Altos that did not have to sacrifice their birds have “had a very profitable year,” thanks to the sharp rise in the price of eggs during the outbreak.