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The Smuggling Problem Part I

This may have been posted but bears repeating. If STTK addressed only this angle of the crisis, it would be great start for the technology.

Bird Flu Virus May Be Spread by Smuggling

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: April 15, 2006

MILAN — Two vans of undercover police inspectors pulled up at a storefront in Milan in March, their target neither terrorists nor drugs.
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A Taiwanese inspector examining birds smuggled from China, which is the source of much of the live poultry and poultry products smuggled into Europe and Africa. China also has widespread bird flu cases.
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Picking their way through a refrigerator at the back of a Chinese grocery store off a piazza, the agents found their quarry: bags of duck feet.

This followed a similar raid at a Milan warehouse a few months ago that yielded three million packages of chicken meat smuggled from China.

There is increasing evidence that a thriving international trade in smuggled poultry — including live birds, chicks and meat — is helping spread bird flu, experts say.

Poultry smuggling is a huge business that poses a unique threat: The (A)H5N1 bird flu virus is robust enough to survive not just in live birds but also in frozen meat, feathers, bones and even on cages, though it dies with cooking.

"No one knows the real numbers, but they are large," said Timothy E. Moore, director of federal projects at the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center at Kansas State University.

"Behind illegal drug traffic, illegal animals are No. 2," he said. "And there is no doubt in my mind that this will play a prominent role in the spread of this disease. It looks to be the main way it is spreading in some parts of the world," along with the migration of wild birds.

Particularly when smuggled live, poultry can easily pass the disease on to birds in other countries. Though the risk of transmission in, say, infected frozen duck feet in a restaurant is minimal, poultry parts can also spread the disease to birds when used as raw feed or in fertilizer on farms.

Poultry from bird-flu-infected countries has been banned in Europe since 2002, but smuggling seriously undermines those bans.

"In spite of the E.U. ban, we are still seizing Chinese poultry products," said Gen. Emilio Borghini, commander of the Military Police Health Service in Italy.

Many experts are convinced that the illegal import of infected live chicks introduced the virus into Nigeria. Its first cases were confirmed in February, but soon the virus appeared on poultry farms in multiple areas, leading to the widespread culling of birds in a country that can ill afford the loss.

And yet, the disease has not been found in wild birds there.

In early April, Vietnamese health officials said chickens smuggled over the border from China had reintroduced bird flu into their country, which had reported no cases for four months.

No one has any precise sense of the breadth of the trade, or the extent of its role in spreading bird flu, because until recently poultry smuggling was regarded mostly as a nuisance.

There is extensive smuggling between China and Africa. In the developing world, the illegal trade often has economic roots, to avoid duties. But there is a strong cultural element as well. For example, Asian immigrants seek out poultry products, like feet, that may not be available in the West. The illegal meat seized in Italy has been at Chinese stores or warehouses servicing Chinese restaurants.

"I would love to have a map of illegal trade, but I'm embarrassed to say we don't have a good handle on it," said Dr. Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. "We all know it occurs and we are worried, but what we see confiscated is only the tip of the iceberg."

The trade is hard to control because huge amounts cross borders in trucks, carts, planes and boats each day. Smuggled meat from Asia is often loaded in containers with a mishmash of other goods, like clothes, toys and furniture.

"We're aware that the risk to public health can be hidden in these containers, but thousands of containers pass through Italian ports and it is impossible to inspect them all," said Mario Pantano, director of the Military Police Health Service in southern Italy, who said his staff had found poultry products stuffed into shoes.

Late last year, his team discovered 260 tons of poultry meat scattered among several containers at a port in southern Italy, destined for Moldova, in Eastern Europe. Because of improper paperwork, the inspectors started asking questions and determined that the shipment had come from China.

"The meat was officially destined for countries on the doorstep of the European Union and we knew that the chickens could be relabeled and illegally re-enter Italy for our consumption," Mr. Pantano said.

Although many countries attribute the spread of (A)H5N1 to migratory fowl, many ornithologists say the evidence often points to smuggling.

"We believe it is spread by both bird migration and trade, but that trade, particularly illegal trade, is more important," said Wade Hagemeijer, a bird flu expert at the Netherlands-based Wetlands International, which has been studying the role of migrating birds.

(cont.)