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BRUSSELS (AFP) — An outbreak of the bluetongue virus in sheep and cows in Belgium spread further after multiplying throughout the week, sowing alarm among livestock farmers hit hard by a ban on live exports. By Friday the country had noted 37 cases of the insect-born viral infection, which causes fever and swelling in sheep, turning their tongues blue.

The count rose steadily in the week from 28 on Thursday and 17 on Wednesday. The cases affected sheep and cows in the east of the country, where measures were put in place last weekend banning the movement of ruminant animals around infected farms in the regions of Liege and Limburg. Belgian health authorities on Thursday banned exports of live sheep and cattle as well as live animal cells such as semen, ova and embryos, following European Union regulations. The disease is not known to affect humans. If the …

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M2 PRESSWIRE-25 August 2006-US ARS: Insect virus could spell doom for potato pest(C)1994-2006 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD RDATE:25082006 The potato tuber moth is quickly earning a bad reputation among potato growers in Washington, Oregon and other Northwest states. But like an over-exposed Hollywood star, this pest is destined for a serious meltdown.

It won’t come from fame, though, but from exposure to a type of insect pathogen called a granulovirus. In July, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Wapato, Wash., began testing the granulovirus’ potential to biologically …

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Poorer countries where bird flu is spreading may patent individual strains of the virus as a way to help them negotiate lower prices for vaccines and treatments.

The plan is being advanced by a new program, announced today, that urges participating countries to place genetic information about their individual bird flu strains into central databases in return for rights that will allow the countries to control who uses the data.

While nations such as Indonesia have been increasingly willing to share such information, government leaders have expressed concern they may not be able to afford the products that result. The new program would help countries charge for information involving their individual strains, or negotiate low prices for drugs and tests developed from the data.

“This is an independent effort to bring scientists together to collaborate, share data and put in place some protections that will also be good for the countries of origin of the flu strains,” said Nancy Cox, head of the CDC’s influenza branch, in a telephone interview yesterday.

International researchers have expressed concern with getting access to data from the countries in which the virus has been found. For instance, China recently revealed that it had a bird flu death in late 2003, two years before officially revealing any infections to the WHO.

Timely information

Companies need timely information about mutations in H5N1 flu strains to design defenses against a deadly pandemic that may occur if the virus gains the ability to spread among people. In a letter to the journal Nature released today, about 70 scientists — including Cox, representatives of United Nations health agencies, and six Nobel Prize winners — supported the new program, called the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data.

Under their own patent laws, countries can take ownership of rights to biological organisms isolated from their residents and poultry and decide which companies or researchers use them. International legal groups such as the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of the United Nations, help protect those rights.

In the past, countries have not protected rights to virus strains used to create vaccines for seasonal flu, Cox said.

“There’s been a tradition developed over the years where the flu viruses isolated anywhere in the world were considered to be part of the global domain,” she said. “If we had concerns about intellectual property, we wouldn’t be able to update the annual vaccine in a timely manner.”

Deadlier potential

The much deadlier potential of H5N1 may change that thinking as developing nations become more concerned about getting pandemic vaccine than seasonal vaccine, Cox said.

The H5N1 virus has killed millions of birds and infected at least 241 people, 141 of whom have died. Scientists are concerned that millions more people may die if H5N1 mutates into a form that spreads easily from human to human.

The new program will collaborate with Cambia, a Canberra, Australia-based non-profit research organization, and Science Commons, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to write agreements and patents that will allow the flu strains to be shared, said Peter Bogner, the program’s director.

“Intellectual property is the most important part of this,” he said yesterday in a telephone interview. Bogner said his background is in licensing media, and that he became involved in a health-care project for the first time because of the threat of a pandemic.

Public databases

Countries that join the data-sharing program will post their genetic sequence data in public databases, such as those at GenBank, run by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Bogner said. Companies that want to use the viruses will be able to obtain them from laboratories that do bird flu testing, such as those affiliated with the World Health Organization.

The idea of licensing biological products or organisms, as in H5N1’s case, isn’t new. For instance, GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Rotarix vaccine for diarrheal disease was developed from a virus Cincinnati Children’s Hospital licensed to Glaxo’s partner Avant Immunotherapeutics Inc. in exchange for royalties.

Increasingly, companies have paid poorer countries or their indigenous populations for biological materials isolated from plants used in traditional medicines or other sources.

New Approach

The new program’s approach appears to offer benefits for all parties that might be involved, said Michael Gollin, founder of Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors in Washington, which also gives assistance to developing countries on intellectual property rights.

“If the countries that have the viruses can get preferential treatment on access to vaccines and drugs, then there’s incentive to participate,” said Gollin, who said he has helped Kenyan tribes negotiate rights to a molecule used in a fabric softener, among other projects. “The leverage seems to be there.”

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A helicopter sprayed a pesticide to kill mosquitoes along Contra Costa’s northern shoreline Thursday night, hours after officials announced the county’s first West Nile virus fatality.

The spraying had been planned before the death of the elderly central county woman, which occurred last week but was revealed Thursday

The local death is the second this year in California from the mosquito-borne disease. An elderly Butte County woman also died last week.

For the first time in nearly a decade, an aerial crew sprayed 6,600 acres along the waterfront from Martinez to Pittsburg.

“Our goal is to keep the mosquitoes from coming out of the marsh and going into residential areas,” said Deborah Bass, spokeswoman for the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District.

The county last did limited aerial spraying in east county eight to 10 years ago.

Contra Costa now has reports of two other central county residents who are infected with the virus. Both people appear to be recovering, said Public Health Director Dr. Wendel Brunner.

A middle-aged woman was hospitalized and is now in rehabilitation. An elderly man’s case is being investigated.

Brunner declined to provide names or more details, citing federal privacy laws.

But he cautioned residents: “Protect yourself from mosquitoes.”

“West Nile infection is generally not a serious disease for most people,” Brunner said. “But sometimes, the virus can invade the spinal cord or the brain.”

Alameda County has had just one human case reported this year — a man who became ill after traveling to Nebraska. He is recovering.

Solano County has had two confirmed cases in 2006 — a 48-year- old Dixon man, who was hospitalized, and a 50-year-old Vacaville man. Both men are recovering at home. The Vacaville man had traveled recently and may have contracted the virus outside the county, officials said.

The virus first appeared in the United States in 1999 and is transmitted to humans and animals through a bite from an infected mosquito. Mosquitoes typically get the virus by feeding on an infected bird.

Eighty percent of infected people will have no symptoms.

About 20 percent will become sick with a fever, headache, body aches, nausea, swollen lymph nodes and possibly a skin rash on the chest, stomach and back.

Less than 1 percent will become severely ill. Symptoms usually appear within three to 15 days after a mosquito bite. Those age 50 and older are at greatest risk of serious complications. Last year, Contra Costa had 11 human infections and Alameda County reported one. The Alameda County resident, however, contracted the virus after a mosquito bit her while she was on a family outing near Yuba City.

None of the East Bay cases proved fatal last year.

Statewide, there were 19 deaths and 935 human West Nile virus infections in 2005.

The recent heat wave apparently brought a spike in mosquitoes and West Nile virus activity, said Craig Downs, general manager of the Contra Costa mosquito district. Not helping matters, the high temperatures also prompted power outages that brought many people outdoors.

Chickens have now tested positive in three out of five sentinel flocks in Contra Costa. The positive findings occurred in 24 chickens in Martinez, Oakley and on Holland Tract.

The helicopter crew on Thursday night sprayed Pyrenone 25-5, a botanical pesticide that is derived from a chrysanthemum flower, Bass said. The spraying, which took about an hour to complete, began around 7:30 p.m. at a rate of 0.75 ounce per acre.

“This is the same stuff that we’ve been using when we groundfog,” Bass said.

Once the vector district determines the success of the spraying it will know if it must repeat the process. County officials say the pesticide is safe and dissipates in a few hours. But they note that anyone who wants to reduce exposure can close windows, turn off air conditioners and keep children’s toys indoors.

Alameda County currently has no plans to do aerial spraying, but it has identified hot spots of infected mosquitoes around the Pleasanton fairgrounds and in southwest Livermore.

“In both these areas, we had a fair amount of activity last year,” said John Rusmisel, district manager of the Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District.

Mosquitoes often breed in catch basins and storm drains then head to nearby flood control canals, Rusmisel said.

Alameda County crews plan to target the two hotspots with truck- mounted spraying in the next few days.

Thirteen dead birds have tested positive in Alameda County this year and 11 of those were in the Pleasanton, Livermore and Dublin areas, Rusmisel said. The other two were in Castro Valley and Fremont.

For the first time this year, Alameda County hired a pilot to fly over neighborhoods and photograph swimming pools with stagnant water.

The crews identify about 200 potentially problem sites per flight. County employees then follow up by going to the homes and advising people on how to clean up their pools or at least use mosquito fish to keep mosquitoes in check.

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It is sometimes difficult to resist the notion that many of those who feel most passionately about the rights of animals have picked up some ghastly virus, perhaps while rescuing beagles from a laboratory, that has eaten its way into their brains. Certainly some of the behaviour of activists bears more resemblance to that of a dog with rabies, or a heifer suffering from Mad Cow Disease, than that of most normal human beings.

This week it has been Joan and Peter Freeman, in mourning for their 29-year-old son John, who have been their target. John’s death had been reported in the press because he was, it was thought, the first person to have succumbed to the effects of pas-teurellosis, or rabbit flu, which he acquired when a blister on his thumb was infected by a rabbit, which he had just shot.

Within days of their son’s funeral, Mr and Mrs Freeman began to receive anonymous calls. John’s death had been the rabbit’s revenge, said one. Another implied that, as one who shot rabbits, he deserved to die. “We are just ordinary people,” a bewildered Mr Freeman told the press. “The only reason we have accepted publicity is so that others can be aware that this disease exists.”

But the type of call received by the Freemans, it turns out, is a regular tactic of activists. When a 13-year-old boy was killed in a shooting accident in Devon last year, his mother received hate mail. Before that, the grave of a guinea-pig farm owner’s mother-in-law in Staffordshire was dug up and her body stolen.

It is not quite enough to put this kind of behaviour down to boredom, misplaced idealism or even shared insanity. The organisation and scale of the campaigns suggest that they are motivated by more than spite, that some kind of moral argument, however oafish and simple-minded, lies behind them.

Perhaps a clue lies in the photograph of John Freeman, which appeared with reports of his death. A big, healthy, smiling, open- faced young man, sitting beside his cloth-capped grandfather in the front of a Land Rover, he must have seemed, to a pasty urban warrior, like the enemy incarnate - a typical, cruel country- dweller who would glory in the death of an innocent bunny. No wonder the rabbit exacted its terrible revenge upon this cheerful, ruddy farmer’s son.

For the campaign of hate is essentially directed against the countryside. The idea that there are thousands of people like John Freeman, who live and work with animals and know that death is part of living on the land, annoys the activists immeasurably. They are more likely to loathe a man who shoots rabbits so that his cattle will have grass to eat than someone, sitting in an office, whose company rears cattle behind closed doors.

For the activists, it is crueller to shoot a rabbit or a fox in order to protect livestockthan to keep a dog, unexercised, in a small flat, or to lock up small rodents or birds in cages. It would be unthinkable for them to deploy the kind of tactics directed against Mr and Mrs Freeman in a less rural setting - against, say, parents whose son has been infected while poisoning rats beneath the streets of London.

The rage is bigger and wider than can be explained by any specious philosophical stance about the inalienable right to life of all animals. It is about space, and a way of life and the gnawing, bitter resentment felt by a few misguided people who use a fake morality to justify their own cruel behaviour.

Copyright 2006 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

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