Reply #4: That's not fair...

[MrPrax]

The US health reporting services are among the best in the world and so I don't think there would be any 'politics' involved at least at that level. Neither country did a good job on West Nile, for instance. Nor has either country responded well to Mad Cow, but, however at least Canadian officials understand the dangerousness of the 'Three S' attitude among--um--agriculturalists.

Sure folks like Tyson might pull some 'strings' with regulators that might prove less than helpful, but that isn't the fault of, say, the CDC or WHO affliated agencies. Nor is political interference completely unknown in Canada. :eyes:

BUT I think that you might have a point--notice the Asians seem to have taken the situation rather seriously, when it became obvious that 'avian flu' was going to go 'big'. Many of those countries, Vietnam, in particular, did a whole lot of unpopular 'kulling' and other measures, to get it under control.

It would appear it's the 'holier than thou' West that might have dropped the ball here and did not engage in the tight testing protocols eariler.

You have ever right to be concerned of course, much of the poultry production in those Asian countries is 'local', where as a lot of western production is 'externally' traded and as such the West has a greater incentive to cover up all this in their home countries.