We are still in time to be able to prevent the virus from being endemic in Turkey if the Turkish veterinary services have enough resources. |
We don't have a spread of the virus, what we have is the introduction of the virus into countries of the European Union. The difference is that it's human activities, through commerce, through the market place, through the way we raise our poultry that we get disease spread. The fact that in Europe, in many countries, it's been picked up in migratory birds, is very, very relevant, it means that the European authorities -- Italy, Greece, Germany, Denmark, Austria -- are monitoring, doing active surveillance in the wild bird population. |
We don't know how the disease got into Nigeria. |
We encouraged the countries to increase surveillance. But I'm not a policeman. What I can do is to ask governments to be more vigilant. |
We still have time to prevent the pathology from becoming an epidemic if Turkish veterinary services receive the necessary aid from international organizations. |
We're been looking for it in wild birds for the last two months and it is surprising that we've come up with zero. |
We've never seen a disease spread out as much as this one has in the past 18 months to two years. |
What we are seeing is that the surveillance system in Europe is very, very good, since we're picking up disease in migrating swans. If anything, this should increase people's confidence in their food. We're seeing it in migrating swans, not in chickens. |