Now this one is a bit unusual.
Charles Lambert, US deputy undersecretary of agriculture flew to Beijing to coordinate anti-bird flu strategy with his Chinese counterparts. He urged his hosts not to go overboard in banning poultry imports. He advised the Chinese that excessive restrictions could discourage governments from reporting outbreaks of the avian flu.
Strange isn’t it. A US official asking the Chinese to go easy on precautionary health measures.
Then the reason emerged – China imports US$500 million of US poultry products per year.
What had triggered the US worries has been China’s banning of poultry and related products from 14 countries with effect from Friday.
Will this Chinese banning discourage the US government from reporting outbreaks of the avian flu? The US had suffered a drop in agricultural exports after the outbreak of mad cow disease (BSE). One of its biggest beef market, Japan, had slammed shut its door in 2003 to US beef exports with consequential loss of billions of dollars (very much to Australia's immense delight because Oz took up the extra market).
Recently, the US has been twisting Japan's arm to re-admit US beef. Japan replied "Maybe next year?"
The US agricultural sector has been hurting. The poultry slump will be an additional economic disaster.
Check out the World’s first educational bird flu movies launched by Goalfinder
ReplyDeletethey have developed 6 animations. These are interactive animated comic book style simple explanations for bird flu, for so many of those around who are confused about it. Also there is a bird flu map that can be downloaded for free, it tracks the instances of bird flu around the globe.
1) Surviving bird flu movie (1 hour 15 minute film) or
http://www.goalfinder.com/product.asp?productid=79
2) Protecting poultry and pets from bird flu movie ( 55 minute film) or
http://www.goalfinder.com/product.asp?productid=80
3) Bird flu - the virus Part 1 movie ( 45 minute film) or
http://www.goalfinder.com/product.asp?productid=81
4) Bird flu - the virus Part 2 movie (40 minute film) or
http://www.goalfinder.com/product.asp?productid=82
5) Bird flu -Seminar movie ( 40 minute film) or
http://www.goalfinder.com/product.asp?productid=83
6) Bird flu - Map (Free) or
http://www.goalfinder.com/product.asp?productid=84
You can see their description in detail by downloading two flash files from our site, these can be freely distributed around.
1) Bird flu movie details and other science animations in flash format (285KB): http://www.goalfinder.com/Details-bird-flu-movies.swf
2) Only Bird flu movie information in flash format (145KB) : http://www.goalfinder.com/Goalfinder-bird-flu-movies.swf
If you want to download each movies' animated previews of around 8 minutes each, in flash format, click to go to the download area.