20 February 2006

Dear Sir,

I would be very grateful if you would grant space for the following remarks with respect to the recently announced 'Task Force' to combat feral chickens, apparently in response to the fight against the threat of bird flu.

While I continue to respect the Minister of the Environment for commitment to her portfolio, I remain convinced the advice she has been given should be open to scrutiny, indeed perhaps management quality control, by those of us with appropriate qualifications but also by the general citizenry of Bermuda, who represent the 'consumers' or perhaps targets of this advice.

I have been watching the developments on the Baltic German island of R?gen with intense interest. The veterinary authorities there are dealing with some criticism of how they have managed the unfolding tragedy, but on the whole their approach has been logically adapted to their circumstances. They would indeed envy our distance from mainland ? absolute isolation, instead now they must monitor every vehicle, person and animal coming and going from the island via the man-made road-link. For this they have called in the army. The poultry economy is at risk. The French are very nervous about their Atlantic coastal duck and geese farming. What to do? Vaccinate or not. The big problem is the fact that ducks in particular can be perfectly healthy, but still carry and transmit the H5N1. Wild ducks and geese can migrate.

The key measure in containing spread is to stop the transport of live fowl but all measures taken to prevent the geographical spread of a virus must take into consideration the locally prevailing conditions and food production:

Bermuda does not have a rural agricultural economy depending on the production of poultry meat and eggs. An outright ban on the import of live birds would only affect one or two poultry farmers temporarily. Nor, objectively speaking is the density of the feral chicken population such that it even approaches that of farmed poultry in areas where the H5N1 virus has spread rapidly.

We isolate our local poultry from intentionally imported live birds and there are other bird species than just feral chickens, which are potentially both highly susceptible and much more mobile vectors. Chickens stick to a relatively small group territory and do not like to fly unless in danger. They are very bad at flying and usually only manage several yards just off the ground.

We isolate our country from migrating birds, and this will be our most vulnerable point. Any weakened, dying or dead sea birds affected with the H5N1 virus could remain rotting on inshore stretches of coast for days, and thus the cadavers would provide an infected source of nutrients for the many other locally based scavenging birds: gulls and other 'sea' birds ( to which we should number the Kiskadee) and land birds such as crows, all of which love a good piece of cadaver and certainly will not mind a spot of faecal contamination with it.

What does the team propose to do, kill them all?

How much more effective to initially deploy this team to identify dead sea birds, as well as other migrating land and sea birds meeting their demise on our shores; to remove their carcasses a quickly as possible and test them?

How much more effective to deploy this team to question returning residents and visitors regarding any possible contact with wild birds or poultry farms in affected areas?

I know for example that my husband and I shall be travelling very shortly to Austria and Italy and Belgium (for the record, not simultaneously); 2 of these countries have isolated the H5N1 ? and we are in one of the highest professional risk groups!

No, as a first line of defence on an isolated island I believe we should do the do-able, practical and most effective measures immediately, and then look to the next level.

There is also the emerging data, which is very highly suggestive that the H5N1 has probably spread worldwide (on continents) long ago, and that the current heightened attention to bird die-offs (not at all unusual in the winter season, and in over-stocked areas when any illness is introduced) has led to the first time testing of birds in many areas of Europe, Africa and the Orient .

I suspect when all the data starts coming in (and this is certainly the prevailing opinion among my EU colleagues on the front line from whence this opinion hails), it will be discovered to have penetrated most areas of the world to a greater of lesser extent. In some areas it will come to regarded as endemic.

This is a story, which has torn through the media at a time when governments are only too relieved to focus public attention on some other threat other than the often government- generated ones bearing down on their citizens. The attempt to draw a parallel with the Spanish flu epidemic caught the imagination of the catastrophe-driven western media; from a scientific point of view rather nonsensical; although evidence based medical research showed the viral agent(s) responsible for the Spanish flu was avian in origin, the virus(es) was never specifically identified nor isolated.

In general, the feral chickens, which survive Bermuda's roads to adulthood, are actually extremely robust and healthy rendering them so difficult to contain. This is easy demonstrable. them as repositories for disease, or the roosters as a violent threat to the health of unsuspecting (more accurately inexperienced) humans may serve the purpose of silencing dissent when the culling begins (by methods sparingly disclosed to the public), but is actually plain nonsense. Poultry have been the most important provider of high quality nutrients from man's waste food for thousands and thousands of years. Naturally, all cockerels will defend their hens, and will become territorial if their hens are sitting or have baby chicks. We have had a few painful spur wounds from our own roosters before we neutered them all! (An excellent way to keep free range chickens close to home and laying, but remove their males' aggression.)

Certainly the animals cannot speak out for themselves, and clearly the best we can mandate on their behalf, (when it comes to this very widely publicised but to date still very low- risk threat of a mutation from a zoonotic agent into human to human transmissible virus) is the insistence on humane and environmentally acceptable methods of culling.

We are entitled to demand this.

We are also entitled ? as recipients of open and transparent government ? to know precisely how, when and where the culling will take place, so we can secure or house our own stock. We have a right to insist that no poison is used, and that the killing is humane and worthy of these extraordinary animals, and worthy of us as their human custodians.

If we genuinely wish to create, nurture and be part of a caring, kind and gentle society, rather than an abusive one, capable of disposing of a living dog by tying 2 bricks around its neck and discarding it overboard ? not to speak of the treatment humans can deliver to fellow humans ? then we, and in this instance civil servants responsible for animal 'control' and particularly those who supervise them, must set the right example to all humans of all ages who call this Island home.

This must include respectful treatment of all domestic and non-domestic animals on this island. How we treat other living inhabitants of the Island is what I personally would regard as a benchmark of civilisation; an opinion I shall always hold and always defend, for as long as I remain a resident of my homeland, Bermuda.

Angela Maureen Ware

Dr. A.M. Ware-Cieters M.R.C.V.S.

Pembroke

February 19, 2006

Dear Sir,

Last year, this government mentioned that this year Bermuda was to get a cellphone driving ban put in place. Well, it's February of the next year moving into March and still no ban.What gives?!

CONCERNED ABOUT NEW LAW

Bermuda

February 21, 2006

Dear Sir,

I write in answer to William Cox's "silly" letter dated February 17.

The total number of Bermuda Registered Voters who signed the Petition for Referendum on the issue of Independence was 15,523 (or 301 more than the PLP Government received in the last election) all of whom knew what they were signing.

I would remind Mr. Cox that he first told me he wanted the Petition papers submitted ONLY to the Governor and NOT to the Premier of Bermuda. BFR disagreed with him, out of courtesy to the office of the Premier. Apparently due to his unhappiness at our action, Mr. Cox then irately demanded that his signature be removed just before the presentation to the Premier on September 20, 2005, which we did. In late 2005, Mr. Cox changed his mind and signed the Petition again. Now Mr. Cox is apparently under the delusion, without a shred of evidence, that I have a personal vendetta against, no less, the Governor, the Premier and Grant Gibbons! It suggests to me that the only vendetta going around is Bill Cox's.

It is clear Mr. Cox, who is after all from the outmoded old school of the super rich landed class, is not supportive of the ordinary people of Bermuda. It would appear that Mr. Cox looks down his nose at the people of Bermuda, and the office of the Premier of Bermuda, and supports an antiquated form of authoritarian government, rather than direct democracy, while BFR supports the principle that the people's voice should always be heard.

As for constitutional reform, I should remind Mr Cox that the world has changed dramatically, as has Bermuda, since the heydays of his youth. The world is in the middle of a democratic revolution and since 1989 almost all European constitutions have seen the inclusion of some form of initiative and referendum process, and Involving the people in decisions which may affect their future by way of referendums is becoming more and more in demand around the world.

Mr Cox and his friends need to join us in the 21st century.

MICHAEL G. MARSH

Smith's Parish