Finland orders to cull 115,000 foxes and raccoon dogs from farms infected with bird flu to prevent contagion to humans

The Finnish Food Agency this Wednesday ordered the slaughter of all foxes and raccoon dogs on fur farms in the country where cases of bird flu have been confirmed, with the aim of preventing the virus from mutating and infecting humans.

The measure, which will affect 109,000 foxes and 6,000 raccoon dogs, is in addition to the sacrifice of another 135,000 animals with valuable furs that was decreed by the Finnish authorities during this summer, mainly foxes and minks.

To date, cases of bird flu have been detected in 26 of the country's nearly 400 fur farms, most of them located in the Ostrobothnia region of western Finland.. Due to this, the Food Agency has indicated that it has found indications that infections have already occurred among mammals on farms and not only between infected birds and mammals, a worrying sign that the virus is mutating.

“We do not know with certainty how widespread the disease is and there are indications that it can be transmitted from one animal to another. Furthermore, worrying mutations have been found in some farms that increase the adaptation of the virus to mammals,” Tuija Gadd, a researcher at the agency, told public television YLE.

Higher risk of variants

According to the entity, the longer the virus is allowed to circulate among mammals, the greater the risk of variants appearing that can also infect humans.. “The human seasonal flu season is approaching and if the viruses combined, a malignant mutation would occur,” Gadd said.

So far, these “variants of concern” have been identified in the genomes of six viruses isolated from animals from these fur farms, both in foxes and mink and raccoon dogs.. For the moment, the Finnish Agency has indicated that it is working in close collaboration with the European Union reference laboratory in the analysis of strains of this virus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) already warned in July that mammals such as minks offer the avian flu virus an ideal environment to mutate, so there is a possibility that a strain capable of infecting humans may end up emerging.

The risk associated with minks is that they have certain receptors in their respiratory tract to which avian and human flu viruses can adhere at the same time.