Flu and You

Flu and You

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Yesterday we talked about the fact that there is a highly contagious type of avian flu flying around ( no pun intended) fly ways that ducks and geese are using as they head south. I had a couple of questions for Dr. Leslie Tengelsen, Idaho's Deputy State Epidemiologist. One of them involved the transmissibility of this disease to dogs who are retreating infected birds and she reported it was highly unlikely. The second question, somewhat more selfish, knowing that I love duck and geese that I have harvested on my dinner table, I wondered about transmission from infected game bird to me as I pluck, cook and eat. "We always recommend that all poultry be cooked thoroughly before being eaten whether it is wild game or domestic. This is because they carry all kinds of things like salmonella and things that can be transmissible to people so I would say that transmission to people is very unlikely because they would cook their poultry before they would eat it. But I would strongly recommend in any case, bird flu or no, that people wash their hands after they pluck or wear gloves while they are plucking just to protect them from a myriad of things, not just bird flu. I would say highly unlikely. Birds carry bird flu all the time not just the kind that we are talking about right now but they get other more run of the mill types of flus all the time that are not transmissible to people so I would say the only thing to be concerned about would be making sure you wash your hands after handling birds and cooking your food thoroughly." Wild birds are safe to eat as long as they're cooked to a temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit .

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