Illegal bird trade risky business for Barbados

Smuggling 'open door to bird flu'
Published on: 9/7/06.

SMUGGLING EXOTIC PETS and fighting birds into Barbados could simply offer the deadly avian influenza (AI), "bird flu", a way into Barbados.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Senator Erskine Griffith, issued this warning yesterday during a workshop to determine activities and the timetable for an emergency aid plan related to the early detection of AI in the Caribbean region.

"The trade in smuggled exotic pets and fighting birds and hatching eggs through our points of entry continues to present a challenge for us . . . ," Griffith told the gathering that included representatives of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Pan American Health Organisation/ World Health Organisation, the Inter-American Institute for Co-operation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Barbados Poultry Association.

"We recognise that this will create yet another route for the entry of the highly infectious disease of avian influenza," Griffith said.

He admitted that "a Herculean effort" was needed to keep bird flu "out of this and other islands of the region".

The PAHO/WHO's Caribbean Programme Co-ordinator, Veta Brown, also told the high-level regional meeting organised by the FAO that smuggling of birds posed a major problem to the fight to keep avian influenza at bay.

"The challenges to the implementation of a successful animal disease management programme are even greater when we consider that our borders are truly wide open," she asserted.

Griffith stated that the medium-term strategies for the poultry industry "must include the establishment of new and enhanced regulations to prevent the importation of exotic birds into the island and thus minimise the transmission of diseases like the Newcastle Disease and the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)".

While indicating that there had been increased surveillance at ports of entry in order to minimise the introduction of the disease into Barbados, Griffith reported that since the year 2000, Barbados had been confronted with "no fewer than 15 plant and animal pests and diseases of quarantine significance".

He declared that none was "more debilitating than the HPAI".

In the case of Barbados, he said steps had been taken to remodel the agencies and institutions responsible for the development of the sector, and to rationalise programmes in response to the changing environment.

He added that discussions were ongoing with the poultry industry in relation to the establishment of an insurance scheme to compensate farmers for any losses suffered from bird flu as well as to facilitate a speedy recovery from such a disaster. (TY)