Why worry about the birds?

According to the World Health Organization, birds pose health hazards to both humans, animals and workers working in or around their droppings. (View article.)

Birds and their droppings are getting a lot of press due to the Avian Bird Flu.

Birds have been known disease carriers for years, but are just now receiving so much press due to the method the disease is spread... their droppings. The longest known disease caused from birds, their droppings and dried droppings, that become airborne, is Salmonella. Salmonella has caused much sickness in humans and death in some, plus diseases that have spread to animals such as cows in dairy farms and other likely locations. Avian Bird Flu facts.

Other diseases associated with wild birds are:

• Bacterial
• Paratyphoid
• Vibriosis
• Salmonella
• Listeriosis
• Pasteurellosis
• Fungal
• Histoplasmosis
• Candidiasis
• Sarcosporidiosias
• Blastomycosis
• Viral
• Encephalitis
• Meningitis
• Newcastle Disease
• St. Louis Encephalitis
• Protozoal
• Toxoplasmosis
• Trichomoniasis
• American Trypansomiasis

The most obvious example is when the diseased bird directly defecates into a human food or water source. In the summer of 93, New York faced a health crisis when several hundred people came down with a mysterious ailment. The illness was traced to sea gull droppings in an old city reservoir. Health inspectors are quick to shut down a food processing plant if nuisance birds are found inside. Besides direct contamination, airborne spores from drying feces in air ducts and vents can settle on exposed food and transfer disease. Several thousand cases of food poisoning (Salmonella) every year are attributed to this disease transmission route.

Seattle Times Oct. 20, 2005
Did Bird-Flu cover-up put the world at risk?
Officials have accused Indonesia of ignoring the epidemic until it was too late to prevent an outbreak. After two years of neglecting the bird-flu, it began to sicken humans this summer, posing grave threat to people around the world and death to a humans. Health experts say it started in commercial poultry farms and spread among tens of millions of free-range chickens, finally infecting people. Recent days the virus has killed birds and is spreading throughout Asia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey, Romania, possibly Greece (first time danger in European poultry), Russia, China and spreading to possible Middle East and Africa. “At each step in the beginning, the Indonesian government failed to take measures that could have broken the chain while discouraging research into the outbreak” prints Alan Sipress of the Washington Post.

National Public Radio:
Bird Flu Pandemic