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Call for ban on live bird imports |
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LONDON, Mon. --- The president of Britain’s National Farmers Union today backed the Government’s bid for a European Union ban on importing live wild birds to guard against bird flu. British authorities confirmed yesterday that a strain of bird flu that killed a South American parrot in quarantine was the deadly H5N1 strain that has plagued Asia and recently spread to Europe. |
The virus has killed more than 60 people in Asia in two years, most of them poultry farmers directly infected by birds. “The fact that we are importing live birds at all into the EU surely should be stopped at this particular time”, the president of the farmers’ union, Tim Bennett, said in a radio interview. Bennett was referring to live wild birds. |
Britain has asked the European Union’s executive office to introduce a ban on wild birds. The ban would cover all non-poultry birds. --- AP.
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