MOSCOW, December 14 (RIA Novosti) - A Russian scientist warned Wednesday that slaughtering domestic fowl with avian flu might not prevent the disease from reappearing in the future.
Anatoly Smirnov, director of the Research Institute on Veterinary Sanitation, Hygiene and Environment, said the virus could remain in the yards where infected fowl had been kept.
He also said some farmers kept slaughtered domestic birds in their freezers.
"They could well send them to their children living in town," Smirnov said, adding the virus lived 447 days in frozen birds, 300 days in eggs and 240 days in chicken plume in indoor temperatures.
This warning echoes forecasts of new bird flu outbreaks in Russia next spring made by Dmitry Lvov, the head of the Virology Institute of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.
Lvov said bodies of water near nesting sites and bird migration routes could be infected with the flu.
He said infected water bodies were like "delay action mines" that could explode when healthy birds returned.
