April 16, 2007

The Netherlands allows outdoor poultry as bird flu threat abates

The Dutch Agriculture Ministry said Friday (Apr 13) it plans to lift a ban on allowing commercial poultry outdoors that has been in effect since March 7 due to fears migratory birds could expose them to bird flu.

In a statement, the ministry said that the ban would be lifted starting Sunday, "since monitoring of wild birds has revealed no infections in the Netherlands or the European Union and the (spring) migration is past its peak".

The Netherlands, a low-lying country with marshy shorelines and internal lakes, is particularly vulnerable to disease carried by wild birds, and has often acted quickest to impose restrictions on free-range poultry in response to bird flu scares.

The most recent ban followed the detection of the H5N1 strain of bird flu--which can be deadly for humans--on a UK turkey farm in February.

The source of that infection, which was contained by culling, has never been definitively found.

But "since the summer of 2006, no cases of H5N1 have been found in wild birds in Europe," the statement said.