Bird Flu Fears Grip Europe, Asia

Hungary, Greece Confirm Swan Cases; EU Debates Poultry Vaccinations

(CBS/AP)  Farmers distraught over their losses asked how they would survive.

"It is a question of livelihood for 5,000 families," said Ghulam Vhora, a member of a Navapur poultry farmers association, after his 30,000 birds were killed. "We are all jobless."

Authorities have ordered 48 poultry farms around Navapur, more than 250 miles northeast of Bombay, to be emptied and remain shut for three months. The government has offered farmers compensation of 90 cents per bird, a price farmers say is inadequate.

Malaysia began culling birds and launched house-to-house inspections for sick people in a central district where 40 chickens last week died from the virus, Health Minister Chua Soi Lek told reporters. The affected villages are just outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's largest city.

Meanwhile, throughout much of Europe, what's spreading faster than the disease itself is a worry that bird flu may not be stopable, and a fear that it will put humans at risk, CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reports.

A panel of European Union veterinary experts on Tuesday debated the merit of letting governments vaccinate poultry to prevent avian flu from infecting commercial poultry stocks. European health and agriculture officials say poultry sales have already plummeted in Italy, Greece and France, Roth reports.

France and the Netherlands are pushing for poultry vaccination, while the EU Commission and several countries, including Britain, are opposed to that.

"Opinion in Europe is divided" on the effectiveness of vaccinating poultry, said Josef Proell, the Austrian agriculture minister, after chairing a meeting of EU farm ministers Monday.

German Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer and others have questioned the merit of preventive vaccinations, saying it would be costly and logistically difficult since birds must be inoculated twice in a three-week period.

Seven EU nationsm Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, France and Slovenia, have reported the disease's lethal H5N1 strain in wild birds. There have been signs that European consumers are turning away from poultry.

The Hong Kong government said in a statement late Monday that a magpie collected Friday from a congested commercial and residential district of Mong Kok had been confirmed to have the H5N1 strain.

The government has confirmed the virus in 10 carcasses of dead wild birds and chickens since January. No human cases have been reported.