According to some sources of the Romanian Information Service (SRI), the origin of the explosion of the bird flu in Romania might be the massive imports of living birds.
These sources say the Drakom and Pati Prod bird farms in Brasov have imported thousands of living birds, turkey chicks to be more exact, from Hungary and Slovakia during the past months. More than 20,000 imported chicks have died in the farms in Romania after a somewhat short period. Some of them have been incinerated, but others have been buried. The specialists of the National Sanitarian-Veterinarian Agency have already taken samples from the dead chicks and these show that they were carriers of the H5N1 virus.
CIRCUMSTANCES
According to the SRI report, on the 17th of January 2006, 48,860 one-day-old turkey chicks have been imported from the Aviagen KFT company, which is situated in Babolna Meszaros in Hungary. These chicks have been commercialized. Many birds that died have been incinerated. This way, according to the quoted report, it has been discovered that almost 200 tones of chick bodies form Prota Codlea have been incinerated between the 2nd and 12th of May 2006.
Even though they were aware of the fact the birds have died due to serious problems, the owners of the two farms in Brasov have commercialized birds from the import, as well as fresh carcass or frozen chicken. This is also the most important reason for which the owner of the Drakom farm has been arrested for 29 days. If the information SRI has is confirmed officially, we have to deal with a serious problem of the National Customsâ Authority and of the National Sanitarian-Veterinarian Agency.
INFORMATION FROM THE PRESIDENT
SRI has recently forwarded to President Traian Basescu, to the PM, to the Minister of Agriculture, to the Minister of Health, and to the Ministry of Internal Affairs a detailed
