[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 25019-25020]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            AVIAN INFLUENZA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the deadliest plague in human history 
was the influenza pandemic of 1918 which killed up to 100 million 
people around the world. While annual flu strains tend to spare young 
healthy adults, every few decades a strain arises that can kill people 
in the prime of life. In 1918, more than a quarter of all Americans 
fell ill. What started for millions around the globe as a runny nose 
and a sore throat developed into a gruesome, deadly virus. No war, no 
plague, no famine ever killed so many.
  This year, brilliant medical detective work pieced together the 
genetic makeup of the 1918 virus. The origin was found to be avian 
influenza, the so-called bird flu.
  The new mutant strain of bird flu spreading across Europe and Asia 
may turn out to be even deadlier than the 1918 virus. As we scramble to 
assemble plans and get vaccine, more birds infected and more human 
contact means more opportunity for the virus to mutate, perhaps 
triggering this next human pandemic.
  Both the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health 
Organization consider another pandemic inevitable, whether triggered by 
this bird flu virus or the next.
  The current proposed spending plan does finally address some measures 
to mediate the impact of future pandemics, but it overlooks the 
critical policy initiatives that could directly impact the threat at 
its source.
  For example, avian influenza is not limited to Asia or Europe. There 
have been over a dozen outbreaks of low-grade avian influenza viruses 
in the United States just within the last 5 years. An outbreak of a 
high grade H5 virus in Pennsylvania in the eighties led to the death of 
more than 17 million birds. Nationwide surveys tracked the strains of 
that virus back to at least 48 live bird markets across five States. 
Each year more than 20 million birds of various species pass through at 
least 150 known storefront slaughter facilities in the northeast 
metropolitan areas alone, increasing the risk of human exposure and the 
persistence of these viruses. Most of these operations are not 
subjected to USDA food safety regulations. These live animal markets 
should be either eliminated or at a minimum brought within the USDA's 
existing food safety regulatory scheme.
  The United Nations food and agriculture organization has implicated 
live animal transport as another prime culprit for the rapid spread of 
the virus across Southeast Asia. Yet transportation of birds reared for 
human consumption remains unregulated in much of the world and in the 
United States.
  The cockfighting trade is another area under increasing scrutiny as a 
prime vehicle to spread the disease. We need a stronger Federal law 
against the transport of cockfighting birds across State and national 
borders. Gamecocks are not part of any testing program and there is a 
thriving trade in birds for use in this barbaric industry. The Animal 
Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act of 2005 would increase penalties 
for violations of Federal animal fighting laws to help prevent illegal 
cockfighting. The Senate passed this bill unanimously in April, but the 
identical House bill has not yet been acted upon in the Judiciary 
Committee. The House and the Senate passed an identically worded felony 
cockfighting provision in the 2002 farm bill, but inexplicably this 
provision was gutted in conference. It is unconscionable that we would 
wait on enacting this felony provision. The House needs to act 
immediately to strengthen the law to diminish the risk of fighting 
birds as vectors for avian influenza.
  The bird flu virus could also be imported to our shores via the trade 
in wild birds for pets. More than 400,000 live exotic birds are 
imported every year to the United States. The stress of confinement and 
long-distance transport critically weakens their immune system and 
makes them susceptible to respiratory viruses. The Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention has already implemented a ban on the import of 
all birds and bird products from 13 predominantly Asian countries, but 
this ban should be extended to all nations as a precaution.
  This is not the first time that animal diseases have crossed the 
species barrier to infect humans. The director of the Centers for 
Disease Control has noted that 11 of the last 12 emerging infectious 
diseases have likely arisen from animal sources, from SARS to AIDS. 
With a potentially even more virulent virus waiting in the wings, we 
must not only act now to soften the blow when a pandemic strikes, but 
we must attack the problem at its source, the human-animal interface.
  We must end unsustainable agricultural practices, intensive 
confinement of birds raised for food, the cockfighting trade, live 
poultry markets, the importation of live birds as pets, and the 
unregulated transportation of birds in general. Millions of lives are 
at

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stake. Safe, simple, cost-effective solutions are within our power.

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