In a meeting called Monday by this town’s Mayor Johnny Sambo, poultry owners reported their trucks loaded with eggs for delivery to costumers being blocked at check points in other parts of Pampanga,in Tarlac, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija and even farther north in the Ilocos region.
Poultry owner Jonathan Sambillo reported that his egg products were blocked over the weekend at checkpoints in Pulilan, Bulacan and somewhere in Tarlac.
“Many local governments outside Pampanga have overreacted to the avian flu report. They think all poultry and related products in Pampanga are infected with avian fl u. Similar cases of eggs being delivered from Ilocos Sur were blocked from entry in Ilocos Norte,” he said.
Fear of contracting avian flu has also caused problems in culling some 200,000 chickens in pountry farms within the one-kilometer radius of the avian flu center in San Carlos in San Luis.
While officials of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) earlier said some 200,000 chickens in the zone could be culled in three days, Dr. Arlene Vytiaco, chief of the Dr. Arlene Vytiaco, head of the animal disease and control division of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) said the culling could be finished in at least six days instead.
This, after some difficulty in hiring local folk in gathering the chickens for culling and burial, as they feared contracting avian fl u, on top of some difficulty of those hire in doing their tasks while wearing protective masks and suits.
The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) said in its website, however, that while cases of avian flu infection in humans have been reported, such cases are rare.
It also said that while H1N1 avian flu strain is difficult to transmit between persons, mortality rate in infected humans is about 60 percent.
