Opinion: With poultry stocks devastated, is there a whiff of the next pandemic in the air?

Last year, duck farms in Quebec were devastated. Currently, more than half of the H5N1 outbreaks in Canada are on. It’s the most ruinous outbreak since 2004, when 19 million birds were culled in B.C. to stop an outbreak of H7N3 avian influenza.

Many wild animals prey on birds, or at least interact with them. As a result, we have seen all manner of mammals infected – dolphins, seals, bears, foxes, skunks, raccoons, and evenof H5N1 in humans – most of them poultry workers – but 457 of them died. That’s an eye-popping 53 per cent mortality rate. However, we don’t know how many people have been infected and not detected because they developed only mild symptoms.

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