The United States, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong have temporarily banned Canadian poultry imports after the discovery of a duck carrying a nonlethal bird flu virus, a Canadian animal health official said Tuesday. While the United States, Taiwan and Hong Kong have limited their ban to poultry from mainland British Columbia, Japan has banned poultry from across the country, Brian Evans, Canada's chief veterinary officer, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur. The temporary bans took effect Monday, Canadian news reports said. The bans come after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on Sunday announced that a duck from a farm in the western province of British Columbia had tested positive for a nonlethal strain of bird flu. "The confirmation means that the particular virus subtype would cause only mild disease, if any at all, in exposed birds. It also means that this subtype is not the strain currently circulating in Asia. There is no risk to public health," the CFIA said in a statement on its website. Evans said the countries in question have indicated they would scale back their bans once tests showed that the virus had not spread to other farms. He was optimistic this could happen by the end of the week. Evans added that Canadian officials were in daily contact with the European Commission. "The international response has been extremely rational up to this point," he said. -
