When avian influenza is suspected, a sample is taken and sent to a lab, which can be a provincial lab, as an initial step.
To confirm the disease formally, the sample will be tested at the NCFAD, the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg. That is the lab that will confirm and that is what we use for international reporting.
Across Canada there are provincial laboratories that can do initial testing. That will depend on a number of factors, but certainly the CFIA takes action and places quarantines very early. I would say we have advanced since the early days of this in terms of making sure we have labs and in helping labs come up to standard. We really need the labs to make sure that when they say something is negative, it's really negative, and if they suspect it's not negative, that they say that with accuracy because of the nature of the disease.
There are provincial labs across the country that help the CFIA do the testing, but the formal response comes from our WOAH-recognized lab, NCFAD, which does the confirmatory testing.