Czech authorities kill 70,000 birds at H5N1 farms

[hawkeye]

Czech authorities kill 70,000 birds at H5N1 farms

13 July 2007


PRAGUE - Around 70,000 birds have been killed at two Czech poultry farms where the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which is potentially fatal to humans, was confirmed this week, veterinary authorities said Friday.

Czech authorities have also decided to kill a further 70,000 birds, mostly chickens and turkeys, on three nearby farms even though bird flu has not been detected there, veterinary service spokesman Josef Duben.

?Around 70,000 have been killed,? at two farms near the village of Norin in the centre of the country where the virus was confirmed on Wednesday, he told AFP.

The two farms are within an exclusion zone thrown up after the first cases of H5N1 were detected in domestic Czech poultry last month.

?We are doing this preventively. It is a decision we have taken ourselves in discussion with European authorities,? Duben said, adding that compensation for the latest cull is likely to be around 30 million koruna (1.05 million euros, 1.46 million dollars).

He said decontamination of the poultry farms will continue over the weekend.

Since the initial Czech outbreak in June, other cases of the H5N1 strain of bird flu have been declared in France and Germany.

[Diane Morin]

Re: Czech authorities kill 70,000 birds at H5N1 farms

Czechs to cull healthy poultry flocks to stop bird flu

Earth Times/Deutsche Presse-Agentur - Posted : Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:46:59 GMT

Prague - Czech authorities decided Thursday to slaughter 68,000 healthy poultry in three commercial farms near the latest two H5N1 occurrences in an attempt to halt the spread of the bird flu in the area, said Josef Duben, a spokesman for the state veterinarians. The three broiler chicken and turkey farms lie within three kilometres of the farms, in eastern Bohemia, where the H5N1 bird flu strain, known to be deadly to humans, was confirmed Wednesday.

Since June the virus hads been detected at four farms in the vicinity, all of which belong to the same owner , Duben said.

Based on the character of the breeds the veterinarians now believe that the disease has spread from the location of the first outbreak to the other farms.
"It is very likely that it has spread from the first focus to the second one and so on," Duben told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "It is so close that it would presumably break out there as well."

Teams of veterinarians and soldiers were culling some 71,000 hens, in which the H5N1 strain was confirmed Wednesday, as well as the poultry raised by residents within a radius of three kilometres.

This year, the dangerous strain was also found in a dead swan in the country's south. Last year, the potentially lethal strain was found in 14 dead swans in the country's southern regions.

The disease was also recently detected in wild and domestic birds in Germany and France.

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Cr?dit: Christian sur CurEvents