Dying Swan

The Krasnodar region is simultaneously fighting bird flu and African plague

Yesterday in the village of Chepiginskaya, the villages of Razdolny and Lebyazhy of the Bryukhovetsky district of the Krasnodar Territory, located within a radius of five kilometers from the Lebyazhya-Chepiginskaya poultry farm, where an outbreak of bird flu was recorded the day before, local authorities declared a state of emergency. Vaccination of 300 residents working at the poultry farm also began there. And at the factory itself they continued to slaughter chickens. It was decided to destroy 22 thousand heads of poultry, but it is possible that all 160 thousand chickens kept in the buildings of Lebyazhya-Chepiginskaya will go under the knife. And in the south of Kuban, in the Adler district of Sochi, the complete extermination of all pigs begins. The reason is the high probability of infection of animals with African plague, which is already rampant in neighboring Georgia and Armenia.

The death of chickens at the Lebyazhya-Chepiginskaya poultry farm began on September 1. In two days, 410 birds died. Local veterinarians initially believed that the chickens were dying due to extreme heat, because they did not exhibit flu symptoms: the birds’ eyes did not roll back, and there was no lethargy. On the contrary, the birds were even too active - and suddenly fell dead. Now that it is already known for sure that the cause of death of chickens at the poultry farm was the genome of the avian influenza virus type A subtype H5N1, factory veterinarians say that the virus is probably mutating. They do not find any other explanation for the “non-standard” dying behavior of their charges.

A pathological examination of dead chickens was carried out at the Krasnodar interdistrict veterinary laboratory. There it was established that an epidemic of bird flu began at the Lebyazhya-Chepiginskaya poultry farm. Specialists from the Federal Center for Animal Health Protection of Rosselkhoznadzor confirmed the diagnosis. After this, a quarantine was immediately declared in the vicinity of the poultry farm. Outsiders are not allowed into the villages and villages, and vehicles entering and leaving the quarantine zone are treated with a disinfectant solution.

The state of emergency in the Bryukhovetsky district will last at least three weeks. Such measures, as noted by the district administration, are necessary primarily to protect people: after all, the H5N1 virus is also dangerous for humans. Protecting people from the bird flu virus as a priority was discussed at an emergency meeting of the Kuban Security Council, which the regional governor, Alexander Tkachev, held on Tuesday. At the meeting, it turned out that just a week ago Lebyazhya-Chepiginskaya was checked for protection against bird flu, and the regional commission found no violations at the poultry farm. Now the enterprise is staffed by employees of the district prosecutor's office and specialists from Rosselkhoznadzor, who will have to answer the question of how the virus was able to get into the sterile buildings and infect the birds vaccinated against it.

Residents of the village of Razdolny, located near the factory, say that the source of infection may be estuaries, or more precisely, wild birds, of which there are quite a lot on these estuaries. At one of them, not far from the factory, dead swans were seen.

At a meeting of the regional Security Council, Mr. Tkachev admitted: now no one can guarantee that the transmission of this disease can somehow be prevented. “This is wild fauna: birds fly, mice and rats run around without control,” the governor complained. What is happening is approximately the same as last year, when an outbreak of bird flu was recorded at a poultry farm in the Kuban village of Tbilisskaya, where the cause of the epidemic was a crow infected with the virus.

African swine fever, unlike bird flu, is not transmitted to humans, but Rosselkhoznadzor experts consider this disease to be extremely dangerous, because all animals infected with it will certainly die. To date, there is no vaccine in the world that can protect pigs from this plague. It can only be combated by the total extermination of animals over vast territories, thus creating barriers that are insurmountable for the virus. Therefore, in the Adler district of Sochi, the total slaughter of pigs begins, although all of them are healthy. It is better to use pork now, it was decided at a meeting of the regional security council. If animals become infected with plague, then they will have to be buried, and the financial losses will be incommensurate with the current ones.

The probability of infection of pigs in Kuban is very high: there is already an epidemic in neighboring Abkhazia. African swine fever is also rampant in Armenia. It began to spread throughout the Caucasus from Georgia. Just two months ago, UN observers located in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone recorded the dumping of dead animals into the Kodori River on Georgian territory. The fact that pigs in Georgia died from plague was determined by specialists from the Rosselkhoznadzor Animal Protection Institute. They believe that the national service for food safety, veterinary medicine and plant protection of the Georgian Ministry of Agriculture has let the situation get out of control.

On August 29, Rosselkhoznadzor already banned the import of all livestock products from Armenia, as well as its transit through the territory of Armenia to Russia. Earlier, in June, Armenia itself introduced a ban on the import of pork and pork products from Georgia due to the spread of this dangerous virus there. All large pig breeding farms in Armenia have switched to a closed cycle regime, that is, their contacts with the outside world have been reduced to a minimum.

Since yesterday, a strict ban on the movement of livestock products has been introduced on the Russian border with Abkhazia. Two special ovens will be installed right at the border, in which any meat taken from the luggage of people crossing the border will be immediately burned.

Meanwhile, it is almost impossible to destroy all pigs on the territory of the Adler region: if everything is clear with domestic animals, then problems will certainly arise with their wild relatives - wild boars, which can also be infected with African plague. After all, the territory of the Adler region is hundreds of square kilometers of inaccessible mountainous terrain. Moreover, a significant part of these areas is occupied by the Caucasian State Natural Biosphere Reserve, where, of course, no one will run after wild boars with a gun.

Igor GLANIN, Krasnodar region