Britain urges EU-wide ban of wild bird imports, examines what strain of bird flu killed parrot
Well guess what, people. Importation of wild birds for pets is a VERY BAD THING. There are plenty of bird breeders around the world who will sell beautiful domestic bred birds who think they're humans and make MUCH better pets than some poor terrified bird chopped out of a tree. Add to the environmental disruption in removing wild birds from their habitat (what we haven't destroyed by purchasing goods made from what's left of rain forest woods from around the world) the quarantine program, and you have a disaster waiting to happen. In fact, it may already HAVE happened.
Quarantine facilities are often packed full of birds from many different areas of the world, passing germs to each other that most have never developed an immunity to. The birds get sick. They pass the diseases on. Only the strongest survive quarantine, and they may be carrying who knows what asymptomatically. All of those poor birds that were sharing airspace with this British parrot are being euthanized. What about those who may have been discharged prior to this parrot becoming ill? What about the other countries that don't have the facilities that Britain does to quarantine and determine disease?
My first parrot was a wild caught, sold to me as a hand fed baby. Back then I didn't know what a quarantine leg band was. My bird was so sick that he spent 10 days in the animal hospital under heavy antibiotics. This was AFTER quarantine in a USDA facility for 45 days. Luckily, Boo survived and became a great pet, but the point is that allowing wild caught birds to be imported to a country and sold as pets is a very bad idea, and one that may bite many countries in the ass in the form of bird flu.
Britain urges EU-wide ban of wild bird imports, examines what strain of bird flu killed parrot: "Britain on Saturday urged the European Union to ban imports of wild birds into the 25-nation bloc as British scientists tried to determine whether a parrot that died of bird flu had the strain that has killed more than 60 people around the world."
(Via Pravda.RU: World.)