Nog een ‘farm’ geïnfecteerd, deelde personeel met de farm in Redgrave.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,,2211521,00.html
11.45 GMT
Second outbreak of bird flu suspected
Allegra Stratton, John Vidal and agencies
Thursday November 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Dead turkeys are seen being loaded onto a truck at a farm in Suffolk. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
A second suspected outbreak of bird flu is being investigated after birds due to be culled in a precautionary measure were found to be already dead.
The dead birds were discovered overnight when animal health officials turned up to kill the farm's 5,500 turkeys.
Grove farm in Botesdale, Suffolk, was one of four sites yesterday assessed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to have been in “dangerous contact” with the initial case of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.
The discovery of dead birds has turned the cull into what animal health officials call ‘slaughter on suspicion’.
The premises is within the two-mile protection zone set up around Redgrave Park farm after turkeys there were found to have the H5N1 strain of the disease earlier this week. Including Grove farm's 5,500 turkeys, 22,000 free-range turkeys on the four farms closely linked to the infected poultry farm in Suffolk were being culled last night as a precaution against the bird flu strain spreading.
None of the birds were tested for the disease ahead of the cull but all were considered to be at risk by government vets because the five farms share a small workforce which travels between the sites.
The birds are all on farms within 10 miles of Redgrave Park - where the bird flu outbreak of H5N1 was confirmed on Tuesday - which are operated by Redgrave Poultry, a subsidiary of Gressingham foods.
Redgrave Poultry said last night it was bemused by the source of the disease. “None of the workforce goes to the continent; all are local,” said a spokesman for the company.
He said that the turkeys found to have the disease had no access to wild birds on an ornamental lake at Redgrave Hall stately home, as reported yesterday.
"Redgrave Park is a free-range farm where birds are kept in paddocks during the day and have housing available for night-time. All of their feed and water is provided indoors in order to discourage wildfowl.
“The turkeys are prevented from accessing the lake on the property by electrified fencing, empty ground and a farm road. It is pretty much unknown for a wild bird to be found in one of the turkey sheds.”
He also denied that Redgrave Poultry or its subsidiaries imported turkey poults (chicks) from abroad and said that all the birds' feed came from Britain.
Last night Defra said it was considering what to do with a flock of 30,000 free-range geese being bred for the company at a farm two miles from the outbreak. These are understood to be traditionally bred seasonal geese which live outdoors and there are no facilities to bring them indoors.
The virus in this outbreak has been found by government vets to be similar to the one found in the Czech Republic in August and in Germany in September, where it affected turkeys, chickens, geese and ducks. This is the fourth outbreak of bird flu in Britain in 10 months, more than any other country in Europe. The others were at the Bernard Matthews farm in February, a smallholding in north Wales in May, and on Merseyside in June. All were contained.
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