Fed ad warns of bird illness ($4M campaign, disease no longer exist here)

[The Straight Story]

Federal ad warns of bird illness
Friday, December 10, 2004 - Bangor Daily News
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AUGUSTA - The U.S. Department of Agriculture is spending $4 million on a nationwide ad campaign that warns poultry owners of a disease that no longer exists in this country - and has never been found in New England. The USDA says the ad campaign was meant to be educational, but it laid an egg with bird owners, who translated the ads' size and tone as a warning that the disease was rampant.

The telephone at the Maine state veterinarian's office began ringing off the hook Thursday morning with calls from worried poultry people.

The full-page ads, run in newspapers in seven cities and towns in western, central and northern Maine, as well as in 29 other states, warned in 1-inch-high letters: "What is devastating, spreads quickly, and can kill your birds? Exotic Newcastle Disease!"

Dr. Don Hoenig, Maine's state veterinarian, said Thursday that not only is there no exotic Newcastle disease, or END, in Maine, there never has been. And the disease outbreak in the western part of the United States that resulted in the destruction of millions of birds occurred two years ago and has since been eradicated.

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