Four more UK farms face bird cull

Poultry on four new farms in the UK are to be culled today as tests are carried out to establish if they have been infected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu found in a flock of turkeys in East Anglia.

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 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 to the highly-pathogenic virus, 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 (two-mile) protection zone set up around the Redgrave rearing unit.

The other three are outside the 10km (six-mile) 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.

Heather Peck, Defra’s regional operations director for the affected area, said last night that sampling had been carried out on the first of the four farms, with the cull itself expected to begin today.

She said samples from all four locations would be sent off for tests to establish if H5N1 had reached them but there had not been any sick birds found.

She added that samples were being taken from other sites as part of the surveillance operations.

According to Geoffrey Buchanan, operations director of Gressingham Foods subsidiary Redgrave Poultry, which operates all the sites affected, the same staff work at the different farms.

Answering speculation that the virus may have spread from wild birds on a nearby lake, Mr Buchanan said the poultry on Redgrave Park farm were kept in paddocks during the day with housing available at night.

He said all of their feed and water was provided indoors to discourage wild birds using it and that the turkeys were prevented from getting to the lake on the property by electric fencing, empty ground and a farm road.

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.

Mr Buchanan said his company’s turkey chicks were not imported – with all from hatcheries in the UK – and their feed was produced in the UK.

Gressingham Foods does import some products, although not to the infected site.

Acting chief veterinary officer Fred Landeg urged poultry-keepers to be vigilant and exercise high biosecurity in an area where millions of birds are farmed within a few miles of the outbreak.

Defra has confirmed there are more than four million turkeys, chickens, ducks and geese on the GB Poultry Register in the 10km (six-mile) surveillance zone around the farm in Redgrave, Suffolk.

There are a further 25 million birds registered in the wider restricted area.

Dr Landeg has said the disease in the latest outbreak is closely related to one found in birds in the Czech Republic and Germany in the summer.

The discovery suggests the virus could have been spread to the UK by wild birds, but animal health experts were keeping an open mind and investigating all the possibilities, he said.