EU moves to prevent spread of avian flu

ACKNOWLEDGING it is on high alert, the European Union approved measures to try and halt the unrelenting advance of bird flu, including setting up buffer zones around outbreaks of the lethal virus.

As poultry sales plummeted across the EU (the world’s third biggest poultry exporter after the United States and Brazil) the bloc’s executive, the European Commission, reiterated that there was no need to panic.

“It is understandable that the public is concerned, but they need not be unduly alarmed as all the necessary measures are being, and will continue to be, taken,” said EU health commissioner Markos Kyprianou.

His comments came after experts from the 25-nation bloc ended two days of talks by agreeing a series of new measures to counter the bird flu threat. Specifically, the EU’s Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health agreed the automatic creation of three-kilometre (two-mile) protection zones and 10-kilometre surveillance zones around outbreaks of flu in wild birds. In the case of the disease transferring to poultry, they approved the establishment of buffer zones which could cover an entire region of a country, and in which transport of poultry would be restricted.

However, disease control experts say there is cause for concern.

“Of course we are worried and we have to get used to the fact that avian flu is now spreading within the European Union,” Zsuzsanna Jakab, head of the EU’s Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), said. “And I’m sure it will also spread to other countries beyond these five.”

Hungary was awaiting results from a specialist laboratory in Britain to determine whether the H5 virus detected in three dead wild swans on Wednesday was in fact the H5N1 strain of H5. If confirmed, it would be the country’s first case.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 90 people, almost half those who caught it.

Most of the deaths have been in south-east Asia and China, where it first erupted, but there have also been victims in the Asian part of Turkey and northern Iraq.

So far in Europe, the presence of H5N1 virus has been confirmed in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Ukraine and the European part of Russia. Almost all the cases involve migratory wild swans.

EU officials say the real fear stems from the spring migration from Africa, where bird flu has already been discovered in Nigeria.

“Everybody is on high alert,” one EU expert said on condition of anonymity. “We are working on the assumption that there is a high risk of infection in many areas of Europe.”

Brussels earlier this week introduced a global ban on imports of untreated feathers and the new measures agreed yesterday are expected to come into force formally in the next few days.

In addition, a number of countries, including Denmark, France, Greece, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Sweden, have ordered poultry and other tame birds to be kept indoors to avoid contamination.

In a sign of the seriousness with which the disease is being taken, a Greek farmer was fined €6,000 for not confining chickens in accordance with the rules. In the latest alert yesterday - new cases are being announced around Europe every day - Slovenia joined the list of countries to confirm the presence of H5N1 in a swan found last week near the Austrian border.

Greece announced that two more wild swans had been found with H5N1 avian flu, bringing its total to six, Austria’s cases rose from two to three, while dead poultry with H5N1 were confirmed in south-eastern Romania.

In addition, the European Commission banned imports of poultry and bird products from Bulgaria, where an outbreak of the potentially deadly form of bird flu was detected last week.