Mexico Denies Bird Flu at USA Border
Mexico’s agriculture ministry has denied rumors on Thursday that a case of H5N1 bird flu had been found near the U.S. border.
“We are free of highly pathogenic bird flu,” Jose Angel del Valle, the ministry’s animal health director said.
The rumors apparently first surfaced on a Brazilian Web site, which reported that a duck found dead in the town of Nogales, near Arizona, had died of bird flu and that more tests were being ran on other birds.
The Western Hemisphere so far has had no confirmed cases of the deadly version of bird flu, which has killed more than 100 people in seven countries: Turkey, Iraq, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China and Cambodia.
Mexican authorities have killed around 300 birds after detecting low pathogenic bird flu on homesteads in the southern state of Chiapas last December.
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