Bird flu fears lead to culling of wild storks
August 7th, 2006
53 wild storks from a theme park in Ho Chi Minh City were killed after two of the birds were found to be infected with a strain of the bird flu virus that is sweeping across Asia. Although the birds appeared healthy, officials decided to take no chances and order the culling of the wild storks to prevent a possible spread of the virus. Wild birds are natural hosts of this particular virus and symptoms are often not showed, but the viral agent can still be passed to domestic poultry. Vietnamese authorities say that an initial failure to control waterfowl has made the country so vulnerable to new outbreaks of the disease and that the risk of infection would once again rise once wild birds will migrate from the north.