Germany culls farm birds
2006-04-06 15:26
Berlin - German authorities are culling about 30 000 farm birds in an attempt to contain the country's first outbreak of H5N1 bird flu among domestic poultry, officials said on Thursday.
About 11 000 chickens and turkeys have been electrocuted or gassed at a farm in eastern Saxony state, where the virus was confirmed on Wednesday, state official Albert Hauser said.
The remaining 5 000 geese at the farm in Wermsdorf, east of Leipzig, would be killed by the end of Thursday, and officials were preparing to slaughter another 14 000 birds at 90 farms in the surrounding area.
Authorities are also trying to trace five metric tons of meat handled at the local slaughterhouse in the past two weeks so that it can be destroyed.
Germany is the second European Union country, after neighbouring France, to confirm H5N1 in domestic poultry; non-EU members Romania and Albania also have detected such cases.
About 200 wild birds have been found dead in Germany with the H5N1 virus, most of them along the Baltic Sea coast.
Hauser said it was still unclear how the virus reached the poultry stock.
Workers at the farm and others who had visited it all tested negative for the virus, said Gerhard Gey, another local official.
H5N1 has killed or forced the slaughter of more than 200 million birds across Asia since 2003, and has recently spread to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
A domestic outbreak threatens the poultry industry and also poses a potential hazard for people who work with the fowl.
So far, the World Health Organisation estimates 108 people have died from H5N1. Scientists also worry the virus may mutate into a form that can pass easily between people, which could lead to a worldwide flu epidemic.
- AP