Brussels, 01/03/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 1 March the Italian government published a decree planning on the setting up of an emergency fund of EUR 100 million to help its poultry sector, which has experienced a 70% fall in consumption. This measure is part of a ten month moratorium on taxes on poultry breeders and other sector businesses. Although thresholds are superseded in the Community guidelines on agricultural aid, this aid is expected to be notified to and approved by the Commission. France has experienced H5N1 contamination in a turkey farm, as well as a 20%-30% fall in domestic consumption and a total or partial embargo on imports of French poultry or derived products in 43 countries (including the United Arab emirates, USA, Hong Kong, Japan, Morocco and Russia) and is expected to pay out EUR 52 million in aid to its poultry industry.
Avian flu is still spreading in Europe where three new cases were confirmed in Romanian poultry. New cases in ducks (a mallard, a black-headed gull and tubercular swans in different regions of Hungary). Russia has announced that it has destroyed 1.35 million chickens since July 2005 in an effort to halt the spread of the virus, which has also been detected in the Bahamas where ten pink flamingos, five spoonbills and a cormorant were found dead over a two day period. On Wednesday the reference laboratory in Weybridge in the United Kingdom was continuing analyses on different samples of suspected bird flu from wild birds found dead in Sweden. It has also received samples of a potential case of encephalopathy spongiform bovine, discovered in a farm in the Vaestmanland in Sweden, as well as samples taken from sheep from central France with a view to confirming a possible case of scrapies.