U.S. scientists work with subsistence hunters to look for bird flu

Nearly 350 miles (563 kilometers) above the Arctic Circle, a traditional Eskimo feast to celebrate a successful whale hunt is in the making. On the table, chopped-up chunks of wild fowl are ready for the pot, all except for a lovely king eider duck.

Photo: U.S. scientists work with subsistence hunters to look for bird flu

U.S. scientists work with subsistence hunters to look for bird flu

Before this duck is plucked and cooked, a government scientist will swab it to take a sample for bird flu testing.

The testing is part of an effort to sample between 75,000 and 100,000 live and hunter-killed birds across the United States, of which 19,000 are to come from various points around Alaska.

Scientists have been posted in Barrow, the nation's northernmost city, set in a treeless expanse of tundra on the edge of the ice-bound Arctic Ocean, to look for early warning signs that migratory birds are bringing the deadly virus to North America.

No one knows when or if H5N1 avian influenza will arrive on U.S. shores, but if it does come by wild bird, experts want to know early on, before it can devastate the poultry supply, or worse.

The virus has led to the death or slaughter of millions of birds in Asia, Europe and Africa and killed more than 128 people who had close contract with sick birds. The bigger fear is that the virus could mutate into a form that could pass easily from human to human, sparking a pandemic.

But as Corey Rossi, district supervisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's wildlife services in Alaska, prepares to take a fecal sample from the duck with a swab, he relays the same message he has been giving since he arrived in Barrow a week earlier.

"I don't think we're going to find anything but we're looking just to make sure," he says. He tucks the cotton swab in a sterile vial to be sealed, labeled and sent on to a government lab while Laura Paktotak and her cousin pluck, chop and deliver the duck to the pot.

Barrow, population 4,800, is a place where a sharp wind whips the grit from the dirt roads, and snow flurries fly even in June. Because it is a crossroads for birds migrating back and forth from Asia and traveling to and from the lower 48 states, Barrow is on the front lines of the early-detection plan, a fact that caused some consternation at first among people who live here and depend on wild fowl for food, reports AP.

O.Ch.