San Diego

More than 200 environmental groups are asking the European Union (EU) to introduce a permanent ban on the importation of wild birds.

The groups plan to file a 12-page declaration with the European Commission by 10 December, requesting the ban in the interests of human health, animal welfare and wildlife conservation.

“When you put the three issues together,” says Jamie Gilardi, director of the World Parrot Trust and an organizer of the declaration, the importation of wild birds “makes absolutely no sense”.

The trust and some of the other groups have sought a ban on the wild-bird trade for years, but they are hoping that current fears of a bird flu pandemic in humans will lead the commission to implement one.

The EU temporarily banned importation of all birds — including processed poultry and wild species — from nine Asian counties last January after outbreaks of avian flu in southeast Asia. That ban is set to expire on 15 December, but EU officials say it is likely to be extended until 31 March 2005.

As well as being home to the European Commission, Brussels is the centre of Europe's bird trade. Alberto Laddomada, an EU veterinarian who administers animal-health issues there, says that the policy of putting wild birds into quarantine twice — once in the shipping nation and once in the receiving nation — is effective at halting the spread of disease. “We can't reduce the risk to zero,” he says “but our rules are rigorous and provide a high level of protection.”

But campaigners say that Europe's arrangements for enforcing its existing ban are inadequate. And Gilardi says that his trust has uncovered instances in which bird dealers get round the existing system by, for example, falsely claiming that their birds have been quarantined in other countries. “The quarantine facilities in Brussels are a joke,” claims Gilardi.