Mexico ministry denies bird flu found at US border
Thursday, March 23, 2006 11:09 a.m. ET

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's agriculture ministry denied rumors in U.S. commodities markets on Thursday that a case of H5N1 bird flu had been found near the U.S. border.

"We are free of highly-pathogenic bird flu," Jose Angel del Valle, the ministry's animal health director, told Reuters.

U.S. grain prices were lower early on Thursday amid talk of the deadly bird flu in neighboring Mexico, but livestock markets -- which stand to benefit -- were treating it as a hoax, traders said.

The rumors apparently began on a Brazilian web site which reported that a duck found dead in the town of Nogales, near Arizona, had died of bird flu.