Why the USA must do its bit in the war against bird flu

During the 35 years I've been reporting on Countryfile, D British farmers have been hit from all sides by diseases that have decimated their herds and flocks, brought them heartbreak and uncertainty and cost us taxpayers billions of pounds to control - most notably mad cow disease (BSE), bovine TB, foot and mouth, and now bird flu.

- By John Craven- Illustration by Lynn Hatzius

During the 35 years I've been reporting on Countryfile, D British farmers have been hit from all sides by diseases that have decimated their herds and flocks, brought them heartbreak and uncertainty and cost us taxpayers billions of pounds to control - most notably mad cow disease (BSE), bovine TB, foot and mouth, and now bird flu.

But only one of them has been passed fatally to humans. In the 1980s and '90s during the horrendous BSE epidemic, 178 people died from its human version, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, after eating beef products.

Zoonosis when a disease passes from an animal species to humans - is a constant fear, but most of us never expected a threat would come from such a familiar source as burgers. Now from the USA comes news of an even more complex form of zoonosis. Bird flu (H5N1) - which is rampant in America - is being transmitted first to dairy cattle, and from them to humans.