February 20, 2006

 

Europe steps up bird flu measures

 

 

Europe accelerated its efforts to combat bird flu Sunday (Feb 19) as Italy called for EU aid for affected fowl raisers, Germany ordered a limited cull of poultry and France grappled with its first case of the lethal H5N1 strain confirmed in a wild duck.

 

Even as governments sought to reassure the public that eating cooked poultry remained safe, poultry farmers said consumption has fallen and caused at least hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel travelled to the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen on Sunday, where authorities ordered a limited cull of poultry to halt the spread of H5N1 from wild birds to farm stocks.

 

Germany's defence ministry sent 40 soldiers specialised in countering biological and chemical weapons to the island to help disinfect vehicles, equipment and people leaving the affected area.

 

Italian authorities said Sunday that a wild duck found dead in central Italy and six more wild birds found in Sicily had tested positive for the highly virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu.

 

Italian Agriculture Minister Gianni Alemanno, quoted in Il Messagero newspaper on Sunday, said he would ask EU officials in Brussels to allow US$119 million in loans and other guarantees to farmers. He said Italian farmers had lost US$356 million amid fears of the deadly bird flu strain.

 

In Romania, where H5N1 was detected in two villages last week, authorities wrapped up a cull of about 22,000 domestic birds in the village of Topraisar. Preliminary tests showed an H5 subtype of the bird flu virus in birds in two more villages near the Black Sea.

 

Austrian authorities ordered all poultry and fowl kept indoors starting at midnight Saturday after signs that a wild swan found dead in Vienna had been infected with H5N1, health officials said.

 

France--the EU's largest poultry producer--became the latest EU country to report H5N1 cases, joining Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy and Slovenia. Outside the bloc in Europe, cases have been confirmed in Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.

 

Serbian authorities said veterinary teams would start travelling around the country Monday to make sure that the farmers were obeying orders to keep the poultry inside.

 

In Britain, which also has also been spared so far, Animal Health Minister Ben Bradshaw told British GMTV television that poultry keepers should remain ready to pull their birds indoors if an outbreak occurs.

 

In France, the Agriculture Ministry confirmed the first case of H5N1 Saturday, but insisted that no raised birds had been affected.

 

France went on alert last week to try to ensure that bird flu does not spread from the wild to its 200,000 farms, which raise 900 million birds each year. All raised fowl have been ordered indoors or vaccinated as early signs that a H5N1 case had been discovered.

 

Dutch agricultural ministry said it plans to vaccinate up to 6 million outdoor fowls, after imposing a ban on outdoor poultry earlier in an effort to prevent bird flu.