India - International Poultry Council formed to fight bird flu menace

International Poultry Council (IPC) -- a global poultry association -- has been formed to fight bird flu worldwide and help poultry industries cooperate with each other to resolve issues that affect them all. IPC Members include Argentina, Brazil, China, European Union, Mexico, Russia, Thailand and the United States, according to a US Grains Council (USGC) report circulated in India. At the formation, delegates adopted a charter agreement whose vision and mission statements and list of objectives lay out an ambitious programme to work cooperatively to resolve several issues. The list of objectives include provisions to encourage uniform and science-based international sanitary and marketing standards for poultry and to strengthen ties to international animal disease and food safety organisations, the report added. Countries across the world have started taking safety measures on a large scale for checking the spread of bird flu. Even as there is no case of outbreak of bird flu in India, a red alert has been sounded in West Bengal for all bird sanctuaries against possible spread of the disease from migratory birds. Italy was also banning imports of live poultry of any species and all related products from Croatia, Romania and other Balkan countries. Pakistan has imposed a ban on poultry imports from 13 countries as a precautionary measure against any outbreak of avian flu in the country. These are Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, North Korea, Laos, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkey, Greece and Romania. Each of these countries has detected strains of the birdflu virus.