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During a recent online search for a hard-to-find
hackle I came across a couple of references to avian
flu and the dearth of certain fly tying materials.
Having just watched the ABC docudrama "Fatal Contact:
Bird Flu in America" a few nights before, I was,
admittedly, still a little freaked out over the
possibility of a deadly influenza epidemic sweeping
the world and my curiosity - the same one that makes
me watch "House" and "ER" - got the better of me. I
refined my search to "bird flu" and "fly fishing" and
soon found myself surfing multiple fly fishing chat
rooms and bulletin boards with very active discussions
on the potential dangers of tying flies with feathers
from birds exposed to the avian flu virus.
Whoa, hold on just a moment. What were these folks
talking about? Could you actually contract avian
influenza from, as one chat room was debating, licking
your fingers to smooth down a hackle while tying? Is
that possible? What could that mean to fly tying? Hell,
what could that mean to fly fishing? I mean feathers are
the very fabric of our sport. Are all the imported flies
that anglers buy, literally by the millions, potential
carriers of disease? Are we doomed?!
Trying to rein in my mounting hysteria I cast about for
someone to call. Who deals with feathers every day on a
commercial level? Fly suppliers of course, so go to the
source. I placed a call to Umpqua, half expecting to hear
the phone answered by a panicked secretary, background
noises of evacuation drowning out her frantic pleas for
help. Instead I got the calm, sleepy voice one might
expect from a receptionist late in the day on a Friday
afternoon. It took several interminable minutes before
I was finally connected to Umpqua president Jeff Fryhover,
seemingly the only one at the company willing to talk to
the whacko on the other end of the line babbling
uncontrollably about feathers being the harbingers of
death and destruction.
Fryhover listened to my barely comprehensible query about
avian flu, and thinly veiled challenge questioning just
exactly what he was going to do about it, him being
responsible for importing all those flies tied from
disease-ridden capes of exotic fowl. And what was
Umpqua going to do when the virus mutated and the
pandemic hit? Would all their flies then be tied with
synthetic materials? And just how were they able to
import feathers from Asia and China anyway? My questions
erupted from one brilliant (or so I thought) premise
to another. When I finally ran out of breath, Fryhover
seized the chance to answer by... sighing.
Sighing! No defensive rhetoric or spin, but rather an
almost bored resignation. It was like he'd heard it all
before so many times, and my questions - which I thought
were leading up to my writing the scoop of a lifetime -
were so "yesterday." He then went on to describe just
how Umpqua actually did business, how the concept of
dealing with an alleged "infected" material wasn't
exactly new to them (Remember mad cow and chronic
wasting disease? Well think calf's tail, and deer and
elk hair.), and how maybe, beyond being major-league
misinformed, I was perhaps overreacting just a little.
Well!
I Stand Corrected
Several days and many hours of research later (research
I clearly should have done before talking with Fryhover
at Umpqua) several truths emerged: 1) Fryhover was right
on both counts. I really hadn't had a clue about avian
flu or the feather import business, and this is clearly
not a case where ignorance is bliss. 2) Just about
everyone else out there is as uninformed as me. 3) Most
everything we "know" about bird flu beyond its current
affect on commercial chicken flocks is still highly
speculative. 4) For whatever reason, both the government
and the national media's perpetuation of the possibility
of the avian flu virus mutating to the point where it is
easily transmitted between humans, is at best probably
an overstated warning, at worst a potentially destructive
deception. 5) The real danger of avian flu and its potential
impact on the fly fishing industry right now is over-reaction.
So what DO we know?
First off, this is not a new development. Avian flu is
not uncommon. It's been identified in commercial fowl
for decades, and there have been numerous strains of
the disease. It is thought that the Spanish Flu of 1918
"jumped" from a form of bird flu and ended up killing
tens of millions of people around the world, including
more than 500,000 in the U.S. The specific avian flu that
currently has everyone so concerned, and which was the
subject of the ABC movie, is an influenza A virus subtype
known more commonly as H5N1. Highly contagious and deadly
in birds, there have been several outbreaks of the disease
in the past 15 years. It re-surfaced in Asia in 2003 and
has now been reported in over 50 countries there and in
Africa, Europe, and the Near East, but not, I repeat NOT,
anywhere in North or South America.
The H5N1 virus does not easily infect people although more
than 200 possible human cases have been reported. According
to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, "Most
of these cases have occurred from direct or close contact
with infected poultry or contaminated surfaces; however
a few cases of human-to-human spread of H5N1 virus have
occurred. So far, spread of H5N1 virus from person to
person has been rare and has not continued beyond one
person. Nonetheless, because all influenza viruses have
the ability to change, scientists are concerned that H5N1
virus could one day be able to infect humans and spread
easily from one person to another. Because these viruses
do not commonly infect humans, there is little or no
immune protection against them in the human population
and infection may follow an unusually aggressive clinical
course, with rapid deterioration and high fatality. Primary
viral pneumonia and multi-organ failure have been common
among people who have become ill. If the H5N1 virus were
to gain the capacity to spread easily from person to person,
an influenza pandemic (worldwide outbreak of disease) could
occur."
The horror of a possible pandemic notwithstanding, as
it currently relates to fly fishing, H5N1 has had
anywhere from little to significant impact on the
industry, depending on who you talk to.
There is currently a ban on the importation of birds and
bird products from H5N1-affected countries in Africa, Asia,
and Europe. The regulation states that "no person may import
or attempt to import any birds (Class Aves), whether dead
or alive, or any products derived from birds (including
hatching eggs), from the specified countries. This
prohibition does not apply to any person who imports or
attempts to import products derived from birds if, as
determined by federal officials, such products have been
properly processed to render them noninfectious so that
they pose no risk of transmitting or carrying H5N1 and
which comply with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
requirements." Additional information about the import ban
is available at www.usda.gov.
The misconception amongst many anglers and fly tyers is
that most of the feathers used to tie flies are imported
into the United States from suppliers operating in
suspected H5Nl-affected counties. In reality, with the
exception of a few exotic capes from India and China,
almost all of the feathers used in commercial fly tying
and/or sold to home tyers are actually grown on U.S. bird
farms and are exported to countries in Asia, Africa, and
South and Central America where fly manufacturing occurs.
The immediate problem facing domestic feather producers is
getting clearance to ship their products to these countries,
not from them.
"You have no idea what we go through, said Tom Whiting, owner
of Colorado-based Whiting Farms, the world's largest fly-tying
feather producer and exporter (with clients in 36 countries).
"Exporting to some countries is becoming tortuous. A few
years ago Sri Lanka banned any animal product coming from the
U.S. due to mad cow disease. Today we sill have to provide
an export certificate to certify that our feathers are free
of foot-and-mouth, swine feaver, rinderpest and contagious
bovine pleuropheumonia, diseases that have never ever been
in poultry. How ridiculous is that?! I spend hours just
trying to find out what a country wants and often it's a
game of just appearing as official as possible."
As for American companies which do import capes and strung
feathers from overseas sources, like Hareline Dubbin and
Wapsi, "Issues related to avian flu have certainly caused
some time delays in receiving product, but if you have the
proper processing in place, like heat-curing, washing in
detergent, etc. and you can convince the USDA that you've
done everything necessary to insure that your product is
not infected, then there really isn't any problem importing
whatever you need," explains Marcos Vergara of Hare-line
Dubbin. "It's just that there are no official rules or
guidelines. You have to be prepared enough to satisfy
the government. The onus is on you. So the small-time
importer who's flown under the radar for so long, and
there are a lot of those guys, is suddenly finding
himself under new scrutiny by customs and is now unable
to import anything."
Consequently prices on certain imported feathers have gone
up as supplies "shrink," under the artificial auspices of
avian flu restrictions.
According to Vergara, "Had that smaller importer been
operating correctly all along so that he was familiar
with how to have his product treated and properly
documented he wouldn't have any trouble getting whatever
feathers he needed. Right now there is nothing that we
can't get. That might change in the future but the reality
is that the bird flu doesn't really impact us very much."
Vergara and others do admit to stockpiling certain feathers
should government restrictions become more onerous or evolve
into an all out embargo.
And therein lays the real potential danger to the fly
fishing industry short of an actual pandemic - over-reaction
by the government.
The popular theory of wild birds being the likely vectors
of bird flu in America is being discounted by some experts
for lack of any data documenting actual transmission. Wild
birds do get avian flu. An outbreak in 2005 in China
reportedly killed 6,200 wild geese, cormorants, gulls and
ducks, and spread through migratory waterfowl across Asia
and Europe. Fears of just such an outbreak bringing the
disease to America through northern flyways in Alaska and
threatening the country's $43 billion a year poultry industry
have prompted a $29 million federal program to test wild
birds in all 50 states.
But examples of commercial flocks being contaminated by
wild birds don't seem to exist. "It just hasn't happened,"
claims Whiting. "What is more convincing is that the spread
of avian flu from one commercial chicken flock to another
is actually more likely the result of a human vector." Many
experts now believe that if H5N1 ever enters the U.S it
will likely be through Vancouver, BC due to its large
Asian community engaged in importing birds and bird products
direct from the Far East.
However H5N1 gets to America - if it gets to America - the
impact on the feather market is entirely dependant on how
aggressive containment procedures become.
"The normal practice in shutting down an avian flu epidemic
is to draw a circle well outside the contaminated area and
work inward destroying all birds, the majority of which
will probably be healthy," explains Whiting. "My biggest
fear is that if an outbreak occurs at a commercial chicken
facility anywhere near us, or even one wild bird in the area
is found to be infected, then the USDA will come down hard
on everything in the state. The media has perpetuated
exaggerations of avian flu to the point where it has the
general public scared to death. This has become a political
issue, and with all the mismanagement of recent disasters
like Hurricane Katrina, there's no way they're going to be
anything but aggressive with bird flu."
Nonetheless, Whiting is aggressive in his precautionary
tactics, not allowing any visitors to any of his facilities,
utilizing state-of-the-art measures to keep his flock from
being exposed to wild birds, and maintaining redundant
breeding populations of his most valuable lines at all
three of his production farms, which are themselves
miles apart.
As for the hotly debated danger of fly tyers actually
contracting bird flu from infected feathers? "Impossible,"
states Whiting. "H5N1 remains viable for only a few hours
outside of a live host. With all of the quarantine and
processing these feathers go through, there's not a
chance of any live influenza even if they did come
from an infected bird."
The biggest users of feathers in the United States are
not fly tyers; we're way down on the list. Most of the
premium and exotic feathers sold in America go to
showgirls in Las Vegas (seriously!), followed by
everything from bedding manufacturers to craft shops.
If avian flu arrives in our country, or if even just
the threat of it becomes too great for the public
comfort, the stage shows at Caesars Palace may become
quite a bit more revealing but certainly less spectacular,
you won't be getting as good of a night's sleep and making
an Indian headdress out of died turkey quills will be
impossible. But the real loss will be the decades of
careful genetic breeding that has produced the perfect
feather for the perfect fly. If avian flu threatens the
poultry industry in America this isn't the loss of a
few KFC stores we're talking about. This is the raw
material of fly fishing that is at stake. Honestly,
if I never ate another piece of chicken in my life
I'd survive, but a world without grizzly hackle, or
peacock herl, or golden pheasant tippets, or goose
biot, or cul de canard? Perish the thought!
~ Joseph E. Daniel
Credit: We thank Fly Fishing Trade magazine for
permission to reprint this article here for our readers.
If you would like to comment on this or any other article please feel free to
post your views on the FAOL Bulletin Board!
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