Category: News
Date: 06.09.2005
Printable version
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has urged the Government to ban the trade in pet birds amid fears that avian influenza could enter the UK through wild caught birds.
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Health experts and vets from across Europe have been looking at how to tackle the threat posed by bird flu, and are increasingly concerned about birds migrating here from Asia.
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However, a special investigation for the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE Six O'Clock News (Tuesday 6 September), has uncovered what experts fear is a far greater risk - the trade in birds at dozens of 'pet fairs' across Britain every weekend.
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Bird fanciers meet in scout huts and school halls across the UK to buy and sell pet birds.
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Julian Hughes, the RSPB's Head of Species Conservation, told the Six O'Clock News: "The RSPB thinks that the risk of avian influenza being brought into the country through bird trade and through these bird fairs is far greater than from migratory water foul coming in or from migration from Siberia.
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"So we think that the Government has to act, and act quickly at a European level, to ban the trade in wild birds."
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Neil Forbes, is one of the UK's leading bird vets. He told the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ: "These places are a cauldron of infection.
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"How can you honestly have a hall filled with birds some of whom have potentially fatal infections to humans where the public are allowed to walk in? It's madness.
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"And how are they cleaned? Haven't we learnt any of the bio-hazard lessons from foot and mouth?
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"It's horrific to think that the next day you might have a Women's Institute meeting or a creche or whatever and have old people breathing in this dust. Or children crawling around the floor, up close to the floor and chairs - breathing in potentially infected particles."
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The H5N1 strain of avian influenza - which surfaced in Hong Kong eight years ago - has killed more than 60 people in Asia, led to the destruction of millions of birds, and has now started to spread west.
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"The nightmare scenario is you could import a bird from the Far East that carries this virus, that brings it into an auction hall, spreads it to a number of others," Mr Forbes added.
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"That then distributes it across the UK and we then end up slaughtering every chicken in the UK.
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"And, potentially, humans becoming ill - and some of them dying of the disease."
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What scares experts most is that it could mutate and pass easily between humans - possibly sparking a pandemic to rival the killer global flu outbreaks of the last century.
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The Parrot Society is Britain's number one club for bird lovers. They argue these events should continue.
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Parrot Society Chairman Cliff Wright said: "If it's done correctly it can be policed.
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"If it's stopped, it'll finish up in motorway services, in a local car park or in the back street, or the back room of a pub. They'll still be sold, but they'll be sold undercover.
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"There are still youngsters coming up today who'd like a hands on approach. It's all well and good saying leave stuff in the wild but there'll be no wild to leave the stuff in the way things going in this world. What do you do, look at pictures?"
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Greg Glendell is a bird behaviourist and director of the Birds First charity.
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He told the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ: "These events are disgusting. It's basically just a car boot sale for birds.
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"If this was happening with cats and dogs, if I was driving a white van around from one fair to another like this auctioning cats and dogs off, someone would stop me.
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"But because it's birds, it doesn't matter. You wouldn't sell cats and dogs like this, police would come down on you. RSPCA would come down on you."
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Notes to Editors
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Any use of the above should be credited to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ONE's Six O'Clock News.
