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LONDON: Britain is to slaughter 35,000 chickens after bird flu was found among dead birds on a farm in one of the country's biggest poultry farming areas, the government said on Wednesday. A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) spokesman said the cull of all the birds on the farm in eastern England would take place as a precautionary measure. "The preliminary test results show that it is likely to be the H7 strain of avian influenza and not H5N1," Defra said in a statement. The feared H5N1 strain has killed more than 100 people since late 2003, most of them in Asia. The outbreak is on a farm near the market town of Dereham, in the eastern county of Norfolk, an agricultural centre which is home to some of Europe's biggest poultry farms. |
An outbreak of the H7N7 bird flu strain in the Netherlands in 2003 led to the culling of 30 million birds, about a third of all Dutch poultry at a cost of hundreds of millions of euros. A veterinarian working on an infected Dutch farm caught the disease and later died of pneumonia. It infected more than 80 people in total. "Further tests are being carried out to determine the strain of the virus and more will be known later in the day," the government said in a statement. "As a precautionary measure, birds on the premises will be slaughtered." Reuters
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