Bird Flu Wings In

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As the bitter Siberian winter approaches, millions of wild birds heading across the Urals toward Africa stop off at the protected wetlands site at Lake Manyas in Asian Turkey. That may explain why, not far away at a farm in Kiziksa, 1,700 turkeys died this month. Scientists confirmed they were infected with H5N1, the avian influenza strain responsible for 60 human deaths in Asia since 2003. Experts now fear the virus is inexorably winging its way toward Europe.

Turkish authorities quickly imposed a quarantine around the infected farm, culling 8,600 birds. But another H5N1 outbreak hit Romania's Danube delta wetlands, across the Black Sea from Turkey. In the village of Ceamurlia de Jos, Romanians began killing 50,000 fowl. Local farmers wept as they watched their livelihoods destroyed. Romanian poultry products and Turkish live birds were immediately banned by the European Union, as governments sought to allay fears that a pandemic was imminent. E.U. officials emphasized that keeping domestic and wild birds apart is crucial to biosecurity, meaning that in high-risk areas, chickens and other fowl may be housed inside. "This has not caught us by surprise," said Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner, Markos Kyprianou. "[We] have been preparing for a possible outbreak for some time."

Amid warnings that H5N1 has "pandemic potential" if it becomes easily transmissible to humans, farmers and poultry workers were urged to pay extra attention to hygiene. But experts said people have nothing to fear from eating eggs or processed poultry products — or from bird watching. In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan broke his Ramadan fast by eating chicken salad.