Bird Flu found in Canada

"The United States has banned poultry from mainland British Columbia, Canada after a duck there tested positive for a strain of avian flu over the weekend, a U.S. Agriculture Department official said Monday.

Jim Rodgers, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department's Animal-Plant Health Inspection Service, said federal officials took the step as a precaution until Canadian authorities provided more information about the tests they conducted on the animal...

...Throughout Asia the H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 67 people since 2003. Almost all of them came into close contact with infected birds.

Experts fear that the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that can easily be passed from human to human, sparking a pandemic."