Europe's poultry industry counted the multi-million-dollar cost of the spread of bird flu in lost sales on Friday after US agencies urged more funds to fight a possible deadly human pandemic that could kill millions.
As the world took steps to try to prepare for such an outbreak, Romania detected new cases of the deadly H5N1 virus in a village west of Bucharest and Switzerland found more bird flu in wild birds and Turkey in poultry flocks.
China issued a national bird flu warning that migratory birds returning during the spring could cause more human cases.
"There are some places where prevention and control efforts have weak links," Chinese Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu told a cabinet conference on Friday. China has had 14 human cases of people infected with H5N1 bird flu, eight of them fatal.
H5N1 has killed birds in more than 30 countries stretching from South Korea to Germany and into Nigeria and Niger. It has spread to 14 new countries in a month, and infected 174 people, killing 94 of them.
Scientists say H5N1 is mutating steadily and may eventually acquire the changes it needs to be easily transmitted from human to human. Because people lack any immunity to it, it could sweep the world in a matter of weeks or months, killing tens of millions and bringing economies to their knees.
The US Congress has approved $3.8 billion of the $7.1 billion President George W. Bush asked for last year to prepare for a possible pandemic.
France's poultry sector, the biggest in Europe, is now losing 40 million euros ($48 million) a month as bird flu hits sales at home and abroad, French officials said on Friday.
The Paris government has said more than 40 countries have restricted imports of French poultry following the outbreak of H5N1 at a turkey farm in the east of the country. There have also been around 30 cases in wild birds in the same area.
Germany's poultry industry has lost more than 140 million euros since last autumn because of bird flu, with demand down around 20 percent from previous levels.
Farmers on Friday urged the government to promote the sale of poultry in Germany, which has identified more than 140 cases of wild birds with H5N1, as well as one domestic cat. Romania on Friday detected H5N1 in domestic birds in a village 80 km (50 miles) west of the capital and in a wild goose in the city of Buzau.
Turkey confirmed on Friday three new cases of the H5 strain of bird flu among poultry in an area to the west of Istanbul and said culling of birds was under way. Samples from the infected ducks and chickens were being tested for H5N1.
Four children died of H5N1 in eastern Turkey in January, the first human fatalities outside east Asia. Eight other Turkish people who tested positive for H5N1 have since recovered.
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