The list of U.S. jurisdictions from which travellers can’t bring live poultry, eggs or raw poultry products into Canada is now three states longer.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Tuesday announced new restrictions on such products from North Dakota, Wisconsin and Iowa, following confirmed cases of H5N2 avian flu this week at commercial poultry farms in those states.
The U.S. border states of Minnesota, Washington, Idaho and Montana are already on the same list, as are California, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Oregon and South Dakota.
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Prohibited items include all raw poultry, eggs and poultry products and byproducts that are not fully cooked, if sourced, processed, or packaged in those states. “You may not bring these items into Canada,” CFIA said in its statement.
Commercial imports are restricted from “specific quarantine zones” within the affected states until further notice, CFIA added.
Travellers’ live pet birds from affected areas may be brought into Canada, if they’re coming with official certification from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), CFIA said.
CFIA, which is also now overseeing quarantines in southwestern Ontario associated with an H5N2 outbreak at a turkey farm near Woodstock, again emphasized there’s no food safety risk associated with the restricted products.
Rather, the agency said, the bans are in place prevent avian influenza from spreading into other parts of Canada.
Examples of specific restricted items from the affected states include live birds, eggs, yolks, egg whites (albumen), hatching eggs, poultry meat (except for “fully cooked, canned, commercially sterile meat products”) and raw pet foods containing poultry products.
Feathers, poultry manure, poultry litter and laboratory materials containing poultry products or byproducts are also on the restricted list.
Wisconsin and Iowa are both in the Mississippi flyway, a flight path for migratory birds which also includes Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nunavut and Ontario. North Dakota is in the Central flyway, which mainly runs through Saskatchewan and the Northwest and Yukon territories.
The Iowa case, confirmed Tuesday, involved a flock of 27,000 turkeys in Buena Vista County, in the state’s northwest; the North Dakota case, confirmed Sunday, involved a flock of 40,000 turkeys in Dickey County, in the state’s southeast.
The Wisconsin case, confirmed Monday, marked the first U.S. case of high-path H5N2 in commercial chickens — in this case a flock of 200,000 birds in Jefferson County, between Milwaukee and Madison. — AGCanada.com Network
