The High-Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADl) in Bhopal claims its genetic analysis of bird flu strains reveals that strains of the disease in India are similar to those found amongst birds in Qinghai Lake, China. HSADL also incriminates migratory birds from Europe for the flu outbreaks in India. How reasonable is this hypothesis?

It's very unlikely that migratory birds caused the recent bird flu outbreak in Jalgaon and Nandagaon. It takes European migratory birds about two seasons to make it to India, so even if we accept that these birds carry the dreaded virus, bird flu couldn't have struck India before the coming winter.

Moreover, if we examine the wetland areas and the migratory birds spotted around the outbreak sites, the migratory bird theory seems highly improbable. Species such as the cormorants and the bar-headed geese, which are most likely carriers, are mostly seen in India in the Brahmaputra basin and some parts of Karnataka. But as of now, there haven't been any sightings in Maharashtra.

The point on the Qinghai Lake strain, however, is no surprise. That could be the most probable strain.

What is the status of Indian testing laboratories and techniques compared to what is standardised the world over?

Indian regional laboratories and the hsadl are doing very well. In fact, looking at the huge number of samples they have to test every day, the Indian laboratories have been doing more than adequate job. However, fao's sub-regional laboratory for the South Asian region is in Pakistan and it's really hard to get Indian labs to send samples to Pakistan for further testing.

The last FAO meeting on bird flu in Rome absolved migratory birds for culpability for bird flu. What were its other significant outcomes?

Many facets of bird flu have not been investigated, mostly because of the lack of consistent funds. But one crucial finding was that the virus spreads more through the respiratory route and not faecal route as believed earlier. Most sample-testing till now was on faecal specimens. We might have been looking at the wrong end of the bird. We need to look at both the faecal and respiratory routes. The second significant