The animals can serve as mixing vessels where human and bird viruses swap genes, creating new flu strains. (sciencenews.org)
Currently, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization devote most of their flu - surveillance efforts to monitoring for new flu strains in people, not animals. (sciencemag.org)
Surveillance experts from the WHO, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and other agencies already monitor new flu strains around the world, particularly in the East. (newscientist.com)