South Korea moves step closer to allowing Canadian beef imports to resume

OTTAWA - South Korea has taken a "big step" towards allowing imports of Canadian beef to resume after a more than eight-year ban, federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and International Trade Minister Ed Fast said Friday.

The two ministers said ratification by the South Korean parliament of import health requirements for Canadian beef under 30 months of age is among the final steps necessary before beef trade resumes.

"This has been a long journey and today's announcement is a big step forward for our hard working beef producers to once again bring their world class product to the South Korean marketplace," Ritz said.

"The re-opening of this market will benefit our industry and the entire Canadian economy and we look forward to the finalization of the commercially viable agreement and the commencement of trade."

South Korea banned imports of Canadian beef and beef products in May 2003 following the country's first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, commonly referred to as mad cow disease. More

Bird-flu research spurs fears of bioterrorism

The World Health Organization issued a stern warning Friday to scientists who have engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird-flu virus, saying their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled.
The United Nations health body said it was "deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences" of work by two leading fluresearch teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into an easily transmissible form capable of causing lethal human pandemics.

The work by the teams, one in The Netherlands and one in the United States, has already prompted an unprecedented censorship call from U.S. security advisers who fear that publishing details of the research could give potential attackers the know-how to make a bioterrorism weapon.


Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Bird+research+spurs+fears+bioterrorism/5932083/story.html#ixzz1jBl0L4Sj

Flirting with bird flu

Tempting fate is never wise; tempting a flu pandemic is downright foolish. Yet, it is impossible for scientists to understand influenza or create vaccines without at least some risk. The question, then, is what level of risk is acceptable.

On Dec. 20, 2011, the American authorities said they had asked the world's leading scientific journals to withhold research on the matter.

The request, to Science (an American publication) and Nature (a British one) is unusual. But so is the research in question. Two separate teams, led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of WisconsinMadison and Ron Fouchier at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, have tinkered with H5N1, otherwise known as bird flu. The resulting strains are dramatically more dangerous.

According to the World Health Organization, bird flu has killed more than 330 people since 2003. That is a staggering 60 per cent of the 570-odd cases recorded worldwide in that period. (The actual fatality rate may be lower since non-fatal cases of bird flu are more likely to escape detection than fatal ones.) The Spanish flu of 1918-20, which infected 500 million people, claimed the lives of no more than one in five sufferers.
H5N1's toll would certainly have been greater than hundreds had it not been for an important limitation: Unlike its Spanish sister, it is not easily transmitted to humans, or between them. But if the virus ever evolved to hop nimbly from person to person, it too could wreak a pandemic.

That evolution has now occurred, helped by the researchers in Madison and Rotterdam. Each team engineered the virus so that it could be transmitted through the air from ferret to ferret (ferrets, surprisingly, are good proxies for humans). Details of both studies are still under wraps, but a paper Fouchier presented in September at a virology conference in Malta outlined his team's approach.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/editorials/Editorial+Flirting+with+pandemic/5933869/story.html#ixzz1jBkSlOIj

U.S. spots two more human cases of flu with new swine virus but cases not linked

Helen Branswell, The Canadian Press

TORONTO - Two new cases of human infection with a flu virus that has been sporadically jumping to people from pigs have been spotted in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control reported Friday.

The new cases, in Maine and Indiana, bring to seven the number seen in the U.S. since July. To date Canada has seen no infections with this virus, the National Microbiology Laboratory said.

While the infections have been mainly mild, the CDC is keeping a close eye on the situation. The head of the Atlanta-based agency's influenza division said a seed strain for a vaccine that would protect against this virus has already been developed and has been given to vaccine manufacturers.

 

"We're really trying to be in front of events in terms of preparedness," Dr. Nancy Cox said in an interview.

"We're being very vigilant because we realize that there's a portion of the population ... that really has very little cross-reactive antibodies to the swine reassortant virus." More

Scientists work on flu vaccine that could last a lifetime

By Richard Gray, The Telegraph

A vaccine that could end the need for annual winter flu injections by offering lifelong protection against all strains of the virus has been developed by British scientists.

The new universal flu vaccine, which researchers say only needs to be administered once, has been found to be effective against a number of different types of influenza, including deadly avian flu and pandemic swine flu strains.

Flu viruses are highly changeable so elderly people and pregnant women, who are particularly vulnerable to the illness, are currently given new vaccinations each year to ensure they are protected.

Small-scale clinical trials on the new vaccine - known as Flu-v - have shown it can significantly reduce infection and also cut the severity of symptoms. Results of the trials will be presented at an international conference this week by the London-based drug development company behind the vaccine.

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Scientists+work+vaccine+that+could+last+lifetime/5665062/story.html#ixzz1d2qskwzE

Rabobank report China pork supply the chronic disease

The Chinese pork sector is experiencing an increased incidence of disease. This brief FAR industry update states that many farmers are decreasing production and quickening the liquidation of market hogs in the midst of disease fears and price volatility. Rabobank expects the impact to worsen in the coming months as hog immunity usually decreases in winter. Production recovery and reduced inflation will depend on whether the disease can be contained. China may continue to import pork to fill the gap in the near term. More

Dairy Farmers expands drug screening program

By Susan Mann

Dairy Farmers of Ontario will be starting a broader surveillance for drug residues in milk effective Nov. 1.

Routine testing of producer samples at the lab will be discontinued. George MacNaughton, director of Dairy Farmers production division, says the routine testing program looks at drugs the industry is already screening.

All processors screen milk loads for beta lactams, the main group of drugs farmers use, and several randomly screen for sulfa-based drugs and tetracycline. In addition to beta lactams, there are seven other families of drugs in use, including sulfa-based drugs and tetracycline.

“What we’re going to do is we’re going to concentrate on the five families of drugs that are not routinely checked,” he explains, noting it’s somewhat redundant to test producer samples for drugs that were already tested in loads by processors.

The changes to the inhibitor-testing program were outlined in a discussion paper released at Dairy Farmers’ fall regional meetings for farmer delegates last week. More