- 13:25 03 February 2007
- NewScientist.com news service
- New Scientist, Reuters and AFP
An outbreak of bird flu on a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey manufacturer Bernard Matthews is the highly pathogenic H5N1 version of the virus which can kill humans, the European Commission said on Saturday.
Government veterinary experts were called to the farm near Lowestoft in eastern England late on Thursday after the death of 2500 birds. The UK government is enforcing EU-agreed controls to contain the outbreak, which involves setting up a protection zone with a radius of 3 kilometres (2 miles) and a surveillance zone of 10 km around the infected farm.
reposted from: New Scientist
my highlights / emphasis / edits
It is the second confirmed case of H5N1 in the 27-country European Union in 2007, following one in Hungary.
The farm has 160,000 turkeys, but only one of the 22 sheds that house the birds has so far been affected by the outbreak. Strict movement controls are in place, poultry must be kept indoors, bird shows and pigeon racing are prohibited, and on-farm biosecurity measures will be strengthened.
The H5N1 virus is known to have infected 270 people and killed at least 164 worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia, and over 200 million birds have died from it or have been killed to prevent its spread. (Find out more in our Bird Flu special report.)
Surprising timing
Avian flu expert Colin Butter, at the UK's Institute of Animal Health, said: "This news is a bit surprising because it's not the time of year when we have a lot of bird migration. If it was going to happen we would expect it to happen in spring, not the middle of winter."
He said it is now crucial to find out if this is the only outbreak, or whether it has spread from another, as-yet-undiscovered outbreak. "If this is a secondary case it is much more serious. If this is the first case, and we can stamp it out, the outbreak will be controlled."
John Oxford, a virologist at London's Queen Mary's School of Medicine, told the BBC he was confident that the outbreak could be contained: "I don't think it has made any difference to the threat to the human population."
Wild swan
The highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu was found before in the UK, when a wild swan was discovered dead in Scotland in March 2006 (see UK's first case of H5N1 bird flu confirmed). It was thought to have caught the disease elsewhere, died at sea and been washed ashore.
In May 2006, 50,000 chickens at three farms in Norfolk, also in eastern England and home to some of Europe's biggest poultry farms, were culled after the H7N3 strain was detected. Farming leaders said those two scares cost the UK poultry industry 58 million pounds ($115 million) in 2006.
Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers' Union, urged consumers not to stop buying poultry because of the outbreak: "We're encouraging all farmers to be incredibly vigilant, and look at their flocks carefully. We do need to reassure consumers, however, that this is not an issue about safety of poultry."
Bernard Matthews said in a statement: "There has been a case of H5N1 avian influenza at the Holton site, but it is important to stress that none of the affected birds have entered the food chain."
Bird Flu - Learn more about the flu pandemic that could kill millions in our continually updated special report.
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