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Quarantine zone set up after bird flu detected in southern Ontario

Jul 13, 2016 | 4:35 PM

OTTAWA — Food safety officials have established the parameters of a quarantine zone around an Ontario duck farm where a case of bird flu was detected last week.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says the quarantine zone covering a three-kilometre radius has been placed around the farm near St. Catharines.

Last week, the agency announced about 14,000 ducks at the commercial farm would be destroyed because of the H5N2 avian influenza.

A spokesman for the agency said in an email Sunday that a “humane depopulation of birds on the infected premise” had been completed.

The agency says bird flu hasn’t been detected anywhere else in the quarantine zone, but officials say they’re monitoring for any spread of the disease.

Avian flu doesn’t pose a risk to food safety when poultry products are properly handled and cooked.

Bird flu rarely poses a risk to people who don’t have constant contact with infected birds.

A highly pathogenic subtype of the same virus caused outbreaks in Ontario and British Columbia last year. Canada had previously been free of notifiable avian influenza since last October.

 

 

The Canadian Press