Poultry cull at four more farms over bird flu fears
The birds are being slaughtered as a precautionary measure on four sites that are operated by the same company as the free-range rearing unit in Suffolk, at the centre of the outbreak.
The farms were assessed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) as having “dangerous contact” with the initial outbreak because staff on the farm at Redgrave Park also work at the other premises.
DEFRA said the poultry had been assessed as being at risk of exposure but no disease had been detected at the new sites.
One of the four premises on which the culls are taking place is inside the 3km protection zone set up around the Redgrave rearing unit.
The other three are outside the 10km surveillance zone but are within the restricted zone which covers Suffolk and most of Norfolk, DEFRA said.
In all, 22,000 free-range turkeys will be killed in addition to the 6,500 turkeys, ducks and geese culled at Redgrave Park farm.
According to Geoffrey Buchanan, operations director of Gressingham Foods subsidiary Redgrave Poultry, which operates the sites affected, the same staff work at the different farms.
Mr Buchanan said: “Each farm is too small for a dedicated staff, so a small team of people runs this cluster of farms.
“While naturally saddened to see so many birds culled, we fully agree that the primary concern has to be the containment of the outbreak,” he said.
The previous H5N1 outbreak at the Bernard Matthews poultry plant in Holton, Suffolk, was initially blamed on wild birds but a DEFRA report later said it was most likely the infection reached the flock via imported turkey meat from Hungary.
