A controversy is brewing in Finland after the country’s food authority issued an order this Wednesday the killing of all foxes and raccoon dogs from farms affected by bird flu in the area with the aim of preventing the virus from mutating and infecting people. The measure particularly affects: to 109,000 foxes and around 6,000 raccoon dogse, resulting in another 135,000 animals with valuable fur being sacrificed this summer (including foxes and other cases of minks).
Cases of bird flu have been detected so far 26 of Finland’s almost 400 fur farms, most of which are in the Ostrobothnia region (in the west of the country). “We don’t know exactly how widespread the disease is, and there is evidence that it can be transmitted from one animal to another.” Furthermore “Worrying mutations have been found in some farms that increase the virus’s adaptation to mammals.”Tuija Gadd, an agency researcher, told public television YLE.
The agency said in a statement that it had found evidence of this “Infections have already occurred in livestock mammals and not just between infected birds and mammals.”The longer the virus is allowed to circulate among mammals, the greater the risk that variants will emerge that can also infect humans, the company said. “Human flu season is upon us and if the viruses were to combine, a malignant mutation would occur.”Gadd said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned last July that mammals such as minks provide an ideal environment for the bird flu virus to mutate, raising the possibility that it could end up creating a strain that can infect humans. The risk associated with minks is that they have certain receptors in their respiratory tract to which bird flu and human flu viruses can simultaneously attach.
