Via BirdLife International comes news of a major new study in Ibis, the journal of the respected British Ornithologists Union, arguing that the trade in domesticated birds, not migration of wild birds, is the major factor in the dispersal of the bird flu virus known as H5N1. (We had always hoped this would be the case).
Without going into all the details here, the study argues that several cases of bird flu spread that were blamed on migratory birds, were, on closer inspection, the result of domesticated birds. To quote from the BirdLife summary: "The review finds that migratory birds have been widely and repeatedly blamed for outbreaks that have subsequently been found to originate in the movement of live poultry and products such as poultry meat".
The BirdLife release, and a link to the full study, can be found here.