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[Tahilla.typepad.com] Bird Flu Watch: Thousands of Italian poultry farmers demonstrated in northeastern cities yesterday demanding action against “irrational fear” over bird flu which has cut national consumption of chicken by more than half.The Italian Coldiretti farmers’ federation said in a statement the demonstrations were concentrated in the northeast because the area produces the vast majority of Italy’s poultry.Poultry farmers packed the main squares of Verona, Vicenza, Treviso and Padua, and in Verona Coldiretti officials asked the state’s representative in the province, prefect Francesco Giovannucci, to declare a state of emergency.Coldiretti chairman Paolo Bedoni said that despite repeated assurances from scientists that Italian chickens were completely risk-free, “we need a national publicity campaign to avoid the spread of alarmism”.“This irrational fear risks damaging an important sector of products ”˜Made in Italy’,” he said.

 [Drmartinwilliams.com] Info and links re bird flu, especially the nasty H5N1 variant in Asia: different regions, rather different characteristics] is not a surprise and is consistent with the H5N1 virus being present in mainland China for some time. The general description of the sequences is very similar to the announcements by Japan and Vietnam and is also constent with the sequences from Vietnam and the two sequences from smuggled ducks on deposit at GenBank.

 [Bloggersblog.com] Bloggers Blog -- Bird Flu / Avian Flu: Bloggers and personal websites have been covering the bird flu (or avian flu) for years -- even before the terrifying Sars outbreak in Canada and Southeast Asia. However, as the disease has spread and there have been more warnings from scientists and government leaders about the possibility of an unstoppable pandemic the number of bird flu bloggers has increased.

[Bird-flu-symptom.info] Bird Flu Links Bird Flu: The Avian flu tag on the Connotea social bookmarking service provides updated references of news, reports, resources and scientific papers on avian flu and the risk of a pandemic

[Bigblog.com] Search: Attention to bird flu crisis ratchets up @ Big Blog: The outbreak of bird flu in turkeys in north-west Turkey was caused by the same strain of H5N1 bird flu that was isolated in August 2005 from poultry in Siberia – meaning that the deadly strain has reached Europe as feared. The European Union’s commissioner for health, Markos Kyprianou, announced the finding on Thursday in Brussels.

Reflected tags on Technorati: Blog, Birdflu, Bird Flu Monitor