March 9, 2006

Italy approves bird flu aid measures

Italy's parliament gave final approval Wednesday to a revised bill to provide financial aid to help the country's poultry industry deal with plunging sales because of bird flu fears.

The aid package includes a EUR100 million fund to offset lost income for farmers, as well as compensation for preventive measures to help avoid the spread of the virus from wild birds to farmed poultry.

Parliament's lower house passed the measure Wednesday, a day after the Senate had approved it. As lawmakers were preparing to vote, hundreds of farmers demonstrated near parliament to show support for the measures.

An earlier version of the bill was passed after supermarkets and butchers reported last month that sales of poultry had plunged by as much as 70 percent after the discovery of bird flu in wild swans. Some poultry farmers had said they would go out of business if the government did not help soon.

But Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi vetoed the package and sent it back to parliament, calling for a review of a tax-cut section of the measures.

Many of Italy's poultry farms are in the country's northeast, a stronghold of the right-wing Northern League party, one of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's campaign partners in the April 9-10 elections.

Parliament has been dissolved because of the upcoming elections, but lawmakers are still there to convert government decrees into law or for emergency legislation.

Elsewhere in Europe, Greece tightened precautions against bird flu at its border crossings with Albania, the country's agriculture minister said Wednesday, after laboratory tests confirmed the H5N1 strain of bird flu in a chicken found dead in a southern Albanian town.