As it stands, the Agriculture Department relies heavily on state agriculture department reports and voluntary testing by the poultry industry. Despite this, agency spokeswoman Hallie Pickhardt said the agency had no immediate plans to impose mandatory testing upon the poultry industry, but that they agree "with everything in the [audit] report, and we're either doing it or going to be doing it."
According to Pickhardt, the Agriculture Department will begin to follow up on voluntary testing with their own checks, while the audit further suggested testing live-bird markets and illegal fighting-gamecock auctions.
The industry trade group known as the National Chicken Council, whose members produce more than 90 percent of the chicken in the United States, said in January that it would begin testing all flocks for bird flu two weeks before they are slaughtered. Stephen Pretanic, the National Chicken Council's science director, said that the industry had modeled its testing practices on the Agriculture Department's proposals, so he expected a "seamless transition" when the department publishes their regulations.
Although poultry experts claim that an infection would be apparent long before it was found through testing, and a single case of bird flu has yet to be reported in the United States, tensions are running high over an impending U.S. outbreak. A goose in Canada raised concerns after testing positive for the H5 strain of the virus, but veterinary officials said yesterday that they could not find enough virus in the bird to confirm N1; the deadly form of bird flu known to have caused human fatalities.
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