Swine Flu Reported in Canadian Turkeys

Dr. Arlene King has confirmed an H1N1 influenza outbreak in a turkey operation in the province of Ontario. Risk to human health is believed to be minimal.

Dr. Arlene King, chief medical officer of health for the Province of Ontario, has confirmed an H1N1 outbreak in a turkey operation. While health officials declined to name the farm involved, it is being widely reported that the Turkey Farmers of Canada website stated the infected birds belonged to Hybrid Turkeys, a Kitchener, Ontario, based breeder. Ontario's chief veterinarian, Dr. Deb Stark, says the transmission of the H1N1 virus, commonly called the swine flu, most likely involved human to bird transmission. The turkeys were not raised for eating and do not pose a food safety risk. The reported infection of the turkey flock is of interest to the international community as it comes just days after a study published in the online journal Eurosurveillance by Italian researchers stated turkeys do not appear to be susceptible to the present form of the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus. The Italian researchers, like other researchers in both Britain and the United States, were unable to experimentally infect the birds despite exposing the turkeys to massive doses of H1N1. These results were somewhat unexpected as turkeys are usually very susceptible to influenza viruses. But Ontario is not the only one to report finding H1N1 in turkeys. In August officials in Chile reported that they had discovered the virus in Chilean turkeys. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency's national laboratory in Winnipeg has confirmed the virus found in the Ontario turkeys is the pandemic H1N1 strain and not another H1N1 variant of the virus. The CBC is reporting that Dr. King says, "the risk to human health from this situation is minimal." But this is a wake-up call for workers in the poultry and livestock industries to get both the seasonal and the H1N1 flu vaccinations.