Bird flu - We cannot afford to take risks

WITH a number of dead birds being tested for avian flu in Britain, the prospect of this dread disease spreading to Ireland gets more likely by the day.

As evidenced by its onward march, international borders are irrelevant to wild birds.

While officials insist its spread to British shores was “not inevitable”, the more pertinent question is not “if” it will arrive but “when”, especially since a duck found dead in eastern France had the lethal H5N1 strain of the virus.