BAHA: Please Report Sick or Dead Birds To Protect National Flocks

Dr. DePaz said that BAHA. technicians did conduct tests for two of the most common bird diseases, and those tests came back negative. He said that not having the necessary information they needed made it difficult to guess what else to test for. He is appealing to anyone with sick birds to get them tested to avoid threats to domestic poultry and other wildlife.

Dr. Miguel DePaz

Dr. Miguel DePaz, Director, Animal Health Department, BAHA

“All we did was take samples from that one dead peacock and we ran the samples for Avian Influenza and Newcastle Disease – two very infectious, contagious diseases which can devastate our poultry industry. Resources are not sufficient to attend to the entire list of diseases, so you have to select your priority diseases, so which are the most infectious, contagious diseases in poultry – Avian Influenza, Newcastle Disease. Our interest is to safeguard national flocks, national herds, so we are very interested in knowing about what we call “notifiable diseases” whether it’s in poultry, cattle, horses, that is our mandate, to protects these national herds and national flocks. As it relates to birds, then we want to protect the poultry industry that is worth somewhere around six hundred million dollars, so dead birds, definitely we want to know about it. High mortality is a red flag.”