Brussels, 05/02/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Saturday 3 February, the European Commission confirmed the discovery of an outbreak of the highly contagious H5N1 bird flu virus at a turkey farm in the United Kingdom, which becomes the second country the EU, after Hungary, to have been hit by this disease since the beginning of 2007. The WHO bird flu expert stated after the discovery of the contaminated British poultry farm that Europe must be prepared to tackle other outbreaks of the epidemic this winter. The experts of the member states of the EU, sitting on the Standing Committee on the Food Chain on Animal Health, will meet on Tuesday 6 February to discuss the measures taken by the United Kingdom to contain this outbreak.
At a press conference in Brussels on Monday 5 February, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection Markos Kyprianou, , took pains to reassure consumers, stressing that bird flu was an animal disease, not a human disease, and that measures had been taken to prevent poultry meat from infected farms from being sold. He once again called on the member states to be “vigilant”, because “we must never think that we have eradicated this disease”. Contrary to what the British authorities seemed to be saying, a Commission spokesperson stated, “we do not know where the virus comes from”,.
On 3 February, the British authorities announced that a turkey farm in Holton, Suffolk (in the southeast of the United Kingdom) had been hit by the bird flu (virus H5N1). More than 2500 turkeys have died as a result of the disease and the British authorities have ordered the slaughter of 159,000 birds from this farm. They have also set the required Community measures in place (protection zone of a radius of 3 km around the stricken farm and a monitoring zone of 10 km). The Community reference laboratory in Weybridge, in the United Kingdom, rapidly confirmed the presence of the H5N1 strain on the “Bernard Matthews” holding, the largest producer of turkeys in Europe. This is the first time that the H5N1 virus has been diagnosed in a British holding.
The Asian strain, according to the British
The British minister for the environment announced that the strain had originated from Asia and is similar to the one discovered a few weeks ago in Hungary (EUROPE 9355). “As with the cases last year, we believe that the virus was introduced by a wild bird, but we cannot be certain until the investigation has been concluded”, observed Fred Landeg, British Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer.
France has tasked its sanitary food safety agency with a risk assessment and pointed out that “surveillance measures” have been implemented permanently: food and water for birds must be protected from any contact with wild fauna. The British and Dutch veterinary authorities (and the Norwegian ones) have set in place isolation measures designed to protect their poultry farms from wild birds which may be carriers of the virus. It is also worth noting that a young 22-year-old woman in Nigeria died as a result of bird flu, bringing the number of human deaths to 165 (mostly in Asia) which have been identified as being linked to the virus since 2003.
The H5N1 virus, which affected 14 member states of the EU between the end of 2005 and summer 2006, is still very difficult to transmit to people, according to the experts, who nonetheless fear that if the disease were to mutate, it would make it easier for it to pass to humans. Until now, such a mutation has never been confirmed. (lc)