Snowy Owl
Retired in 2010, In Memoriam
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...u13.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/13/ixuknews.html
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 13/06/2006)
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Cats should become a new focus of efforts to understand and prevent the spread of avian flu, according to government advisers.
In a review of the science underpinning the contingency plans drawn up by the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), Prof Jeffrey Waage, a member of Defra's Science Advisory Group's Epidemic Diseases sub-group, said: "The ability of mammals to contract and transmit the avian influenza virus has important human health implications.
"We know about cats as a potential host for avian influenza because of the extensive infection of cats in Asia in outbreaks there."
The report calls for more research to better understand the results of exposure on feral cats, farm cats and household pets and the risks of transmission to poultry.
Prof Andrew Easton, of the University of Warwick, said culling cats was not an option and a vaccine was not currently available, so it was important to prevent the animals from coming into contact with infection. "There are problems in doing that with cats in countryside areas which we recognise," he said.
Two years ago, there was the first report of a domestic cat vomiting, coughing up blood and dying from the avian influenza H5N1 virus in Thailand. Then came the death of 147 captive tigers fed virus-infected chicken carcasses and cases in Indonesia, where farmers already link the disease in cats to that in poultry.
Cats can become infected with the virus through contact with domestic and wild birds, and then excrete the virus from the respiratory and digestive tract, sometimes transmitting infection to other cats. Cats fed virus-infected chickens can be infected directly through the gut - a novel route for influenza transmission in mammals.
In the review Prof Waage, who is also the head of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College, asks Defra to increase the speed of reporting of avian influenza cases and taking samples, as well as considering the wider economic implications of a poultry boycott and a walk-out by poultry workers if avian influenza takes hold.
