Avian influenza and food.

The Institute of Food Science & Technology, through its Public Affairs and Technical & Legislative Committees, has authorised the following Information Statement, prepared with advice from its Professional Food Microbiology Group, and dated March 2007.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 strains of avian flu which are transmitted from wild birds to domestic poultry are currently transmissible to humans only with great difficulty, as a result of close direct contact with live or dead infected birds. This is probably because the receptors for H5N1 in humans are deep in the lungs but not in the nose, throat or upper tract.

When H5N1 is present in poultry, the virus can be present in meat and eggs from affected birds. However, if poultry meat is handled with good hygiene and meat or eggs are properly cooked (the same precautions needed to avoid bacterial food poisoning) there is no risk to humans consuming them.

The worst case scenario for human health is if H5N1 mutates into a form which, while retaining its virulence, could attach to receptors in the nose, throat or upper respiratory tract. The mutated virus could then be more easily caught by humans and transmitted from human to human, leading to a global pandemic. Such an event could theoretically occur by genetic recombination if a person suffering from flu caused by a 'normal' human strain of influenza virus acquired an H5N1 virus, which itself had little capacity to infect humans. The World Health Organisation, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, EU Commission and many national governments are making plans to try to avert or cope with such an eventuality.

Following poultry outbreaks of H5N1 avian flu in many countries, an outbreak of HSNI at a turkey farm in the UK in early February 2007 has proved to be essentially identical to the strain that occurred in two flocks of geese in Hungary in late January 2007, and investigations have concluded that the most plausible vector was imported semiprocessed raw turkey meat from Hungary; that there was no evidence that any meat entered the UK food chain from the restricted zones in Hungary; and that the risk to the health of the workers in the processing plant, or the wider poultry farm was very low.

Contact The Institute of Food Science & Technology (IFST) (Tel) 020 7603 631 Visit (Web) www.ifst.org