The US authorities have alerted pet owners this Thursday of the frozen and raw food recall contaminated with bird flu virus linked to the death of a domestic cat, raising concerns about the infections in animals and humans in the country.
The Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) has issued an alert this Thursday regarding the withdrawal of the Northwest Naturals brand turkey recipe, which has tested positive for a highly pathogenic H5N1 strain and has been sold in several states in the US and Canada.
Ryan Scholz, state veterinarian for ODA, has said in a statement that they are certain the cat contracted the virus from consuming the product. “This cat was strictly indoorwas not exposed to the virus in his environmentand the results of genome sequencing confirmed that the virus recovered from the raw pet food and the infected cat matched each other exactly,” Scholz detailed.
The recalled product has been sold in at least twelve states in the countryincluding California, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, and in addition to British Columbia, Canada. The authorities and the company have asked that the product be discarded immediately.
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is monitoring household members who have had contact with the cat to detect flu symptoms. To date, no human cases of bird flu have been linked to this incident, and the risk of transmission to humans “remains low in Oregon,” officials said in the statement. Just a case of bird flu It has been detected in one person in that state and there are no confirmed cases in dairy cows.
A case very different from that of neighboring states, such as Idaho, Nevada and California, where infections have been reported in herds of dairy cattle, which contributes to their confirmation. more than 700 cases in 16 states from all over the country.
Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared the state of emergency because the avian flu virus has been spreading through the state’s livestock farms and several cases have been reported in workers, in addition to an infected child.
In the United States at least 61 people have contracted the virus since April, the vast majority of them are livestock or poultry farm workers, according to CDC data. More than half of the cases have been recorded in California (34), and all but one person contracted the virus through infected dairy products, according to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).
In Washington state, the death of twenty felines due to bird flu in the month of December in an animal reserve, according to Wild Felid Advocacy Center, in charge of the sanctuary.
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