Re: woould you give up to keep your cats and dogs because of bird flu?

Ann <nntpmail@xxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:pan.2006.03.03.16.34.37.513823@xxxxxxxx:

On Fri, 03 Mar 2006 15:18:10 +0000, enigma wrote:
It's been known for a couple years that larger, wild cats
are susceptible. I don't know when H5N1 antibodies were
found in dogs, but my impression was that was more then two
weeks ago.

hmm, i'll have to go see what i can find about that. i
thought that finding the antibodies in dogs was more recent
than finding domestic cats were susceptable. apparently it
doesn't make the dogs deathly ill like it does cats, because
what was found was antibodies (they'd had it & gotten better
already)


i am pretty sure it works against bird/human spread as
well,
since almost all the human cases are in areas where there
is poor sanitation. the kids in Turkey were kissing thier
sick pet chickens, for example...

Agreed that hand washing is a good idea, period.

as is not kissing the chickens...

Imo, the primary point of NAIS is to protect the US beef
export market.

that's what the gub'mint spin is, but if so, why include
*all* livestock species? no one in the US eats llama,
sheep scrapie isn't transmissable to humans, etc.

I suppose other other animals are included because they are
in other countries. Since cattle are being done, why not
include the others? The reason I think NAIS is because of
the beef export market is that the USDA didn't think BSE
was enough risk to human health to bother ... until Japan
embargoed US beef.

which is amusing since they've had more cases of 'mad cow'
there than we have had here, 25 this year already...
i wouldn't worry nearly so much about BSE as i do about
E.Coli & Lysteria from the yucky, underinspected big packing
plants myself.

calves don't get rabies vaccine?

Those calves didn't.

maybe it's not routine in cattle? i had my steer vax'd when i
had the llamas & goats done, but i'm a small producer (he's
pretty good beef now, BTW. teach him to toss me across the pen
;) )

besides, rabies is entirely different, in that the host
generally dies within 10 days & unless one is exposed to
the bodily fluids (mostly saliva) from an infected animal,
it's not particularly contagious.

There are rabies carrier animals. The WV raccoons were
healthy appearing animals that had been imported from
Florida. Agreed though that the bird flu virus is
(probably) throughout the animal, while the rabies virus is
mostly in the cns. But bird flu kills quicker and the
virus doesn't last long outside the victims body.

yes, raccoons, bats & i think skunks can be carriers. fox die
from it, usually after attacking humans, around here anyway.
from what i saw of the story on H5N1 virus in dogs, they can
be carriers. that, of course, doesn't mean they'll become a
vector to humans.

The reason PA doesn't permit raccoons as pets is that no
wild animal is permitted as a pet. (There are some
exceptions to this for breeding and put-and-shoot
operations.)

i had a bad experience with PA & thier pet raccoon laws. back
in the early 70s i worked at a pet store & we had a shipment
of raccoon kits that accidentally got taken off the plane in
PA (they shouldn't have been taken off until Boston). once
they hit the tarmac in PA the F&G confiscated them, since
they're illegal. i spent *hours* on the phone trying to get
them to put them back on the plane, feed them (they were 4
weeks old & not weaned yet), or euthanize them. they were
refusing all those options.
i did *finally* get someone to agree to put them on a plane
to Boston (after pulling a "i'll have my governor speak to
your governor' thing), where i met them at 2am with baby
bottles of Esbilac. i had a bunch of the baggage guys at Delta
helping me feed. what a friggin' pain in the ***! it's not
like they were intended to be in PA at all.
lee
--
war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
1984-George Orwell
.