Deadly bird flu virus confirmed in large Hungarian poultry farm
June 17, 2006
The body of a dead ostrich lays in a farm's field in Szank about 150 kms south of Budapest. More than 440,000 farm birds were exterminated in southern Hungary in recent days as the H5 virus bird flu strain was identified.
The deadly H5N1 bird flu strain has been confirmed for the first time in a large poultry rearing region of Hungary by a European Union laboratory, veterinary officials said here Friday.
The H5 virus, which is not highly pathogenic, had been detected by Hungarian authorities in the southeastern region of Kiskunmajsa on June 9. But the EU's reference laboratory in Weybridge, outside London, confirmed on Friday that the virus affecting geese and ducks belonged to the H5N1 strain, Hungary's chief veterinarian Miklos Suth said.
Some 2,300 poultry have died at the poultry farm in Kiskunmajsa where H5N1 has been detected since last week. About 500,000 other poultry have been slaughtered as a precautionary measure within a one-kilometre radius around Kiskunmajsa.
Some four million of the 40 million poultry reared in Hungary in total are bred within a 40-kilometre radius of Kiskunmajsa.
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