MOSCOW (AP)--Russian veterinary workers clad in long white robes and masks incinerated thousands of slaughtered fowl Aug. 17 in an attempt to prevent a bird flu epidemic blamed on wild ducks from spreading further west toward Europe.

But as officials said they were doing everything they could to control the disease and prevent it from spreading across the Ural Mountains, an expert blamed Russia's growing problem on a failure to keep domestic fowl isolated from wild birds.

More than 13,000 birds have died from the H5N1 strain of the bird flu, which can fatally infect humans, and more than 112,000 have been slaughtered to prevent the disease from spreading, the Emergency Situations Ministry said on its website.

The epidemic, first registered in western Siberia in July, has been blamed on two kinds of wild ducks--mallard and pochard--migrating from South East Asia, ministry spokesman Sergei Vlasov said.

No cases of human infection have been found in Russia. But with the epidemic having reached the Ural Mountains, which separate the Asian and European parts of the country, there were fears it could cross into western and southwestern Russia--traditional farming areas.

A consumer rights' watchdog had warned of a possible outbreak in the southern region of Kalmykia, where a farmer registered many deaths among his fowl. Veterinary officials later ruled bird flu out, saying the bird deaths in Kalmykia had been caused by a parasitic worm, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The country's public health chief also warned this week that the virus could reach the Black Sea and Caspian Sea regions this autumn--and from there move to the Middle East and Mediterranean--and speed through European Russia by the spring.

A veterinary expert said that, regardless of how the disease reached Russian soil, its spread could be blamed on a lack of preventative measures to protect domestic fowl.

Poultry farmers were failing to keep domestic birds from coming into contact with wild birds, said Pavel Tomkovich, deputy head of the Russian Bird Protection Union, according to Interfax news agency.

In the Netherlands, where more than 30 million birds were culled in a 2003 avian influenza epidemic, the Agriculture Ministry on Tuesday imposed measures on commercial farmers to prevent a new outbreak.

Free-range bird farms were instructed to keep chickens, ducks and other birds indoors when the wild bird migration starts in September. Private bird keepers were also advised to keep their animals inside.

Date: 8/23/05