Ecuador declares animal health emergency due to avian influenza outbreak

The Ecuadorian government declared the animal health emergency in the Andean country before an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza and will sacrifice some 180,000 aves to prevent the spread of the virus, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Wednesday.

The first case of the outbreak H5 avian influenza It was detected on a poultry farm in the Andean province of Cotopaxi, south of Quito, for which the authorities lifted an epidemiological fence over the weekend and activated an internal quarantine in possible infected areas.

The disease, commonly called bird fluis often transmitted by wild birds that can spread the virus to poultry.

“During the next 90 days, it will not be possible to mobilize birds, products and by-products of avian origin such as eggs, hens, chickens, among others, from the farms affected by the outbreak,” the ministry said in a statement.

“As part of the security protocol, the birds that are in the detected focus will be sacrificed; there are approximately 180,000 birds,” he added.

The authorities said that the focus detected is the 0.15% of the country’s poultry populationwhich has some 263 million chickens y 16 million laying birdsaccording to official data.

The ministry informed that they are carrying out monitoring and controls with some 850 technicians in other poultry farms, in order to rule out the presence of influenza in other provinces.

The Ecuadorian poultry sector has 1,810 farms and generates 1.8 billion dollars, which represents the 23% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the South American nation.

The Ministry of Agriculture assured that avian influenza does not constitute a risk to public healthso it guaranteed the consumption of eggs and chicken meat.