State and federal agents trying to control the spread of a deadly avian disease have killed 3.4 million birds in Southern California -- some of them household parrots and parakeets -- and have enlisted hundreds of investigators, mail carriers and talkative neighbors to help identify homes with birds.
Officials with the Exotic Newcastle Disease Task Force say they must take extreme measures to halt the disease, which spreads like a virulent flu, before it wipes out the state's $3-billion poultry industry.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday April 15, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 70 words Type of Material: Correction
Exotic Newcastle disease -- A photo caption in Saturday's California section incorrectly stated that actor Jeff Maxwell said the Postal Service told officials about his 22-year-old pet parrot, George. Maxwell learned from his mail carrier that USDA officials trying to eradicate the Exotic Newcastle disease have enlisted the postal service to report the addresses of bird owners. But he said his letter carrier did not inform officials about his bird.
Since the disease was discovered in September in a backyard flock of chickens in Compton, task force members have placed wide swaths of Southern California under quarantine. They walk door-to-door, searching for sick birds. If a bird is suspected of having the disease, it is killed immediately, in some cases in front of crying owners.
Bird lovers complain that they are more frightened of the task force than the disease.
Actor-producer Jeff Maxwell, who owns a 22-year-old parrot, said he watched in shock as a task force agent last weekend jotted down the address and a description of his Alhambra home and then entered its global positioning satellite coordinates into a hand-held computer. He later learned from his mailman that USDA officials have enlisted the Postal Service into reporting the addresses of bird owners.
The task force has been given "carte blanche to kill any feathered thing on your property or your house regardless of whether it tests positive," Maxwell said. "The thought of somebody driving to my door, which now could happen because I've been identified as being a bird owner, and coming in and killing my bird in front of me is outrageous."
Annette Whiteford, who helps manage the task force on behalf of the state Department of Food and Agriculture, has spent months fielding similar complaints from angry and distraught bird owners.
"Being on this task force has been depressing because I have been trained to save animals," said Whiteford, a veterinarian. "Now my mission is to save animals by killing animals. This disease is not pretty."
Exotic Newcastle is harmless to humans but affects virtually all bird species, especially chickens. The uncurable disease causes sneezing, coughing and diarrhea, and can be spread by a speck of saliva carried on a feather blowing in the wind.
The last time the virus hit the state's poultry industry was in the early 1970s, when 12 million chickens had to be destroyed at a cost of more than $50 million. The disease took almost three years to eradicate.
