Germany confirms bird flu in fowl

Germany confirms bird flu in fowl
Authorities in the eastern German state of Saxony said on Wednesday that tests had confirmed for the first time the presence of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in domestic fowl.

The confirmation of bird flu at a large German poultry farm is the second instance of H5N1 in domestic fowl in the European Union after an outbreak in France in late February.

"This is the first case of H5N1 in domestic fowl (in Germany) and this makes it somewhat explosive," Saxony's minister of social affairs, Helma Orosz, told a news conference. "Tonight we will start to kill all the birds (at the farm)."

Several EU countries, including Germany, have reported cases of avian flu in wild birds, but most have so far managed to keep it out of domestic flocks.

The federal press office said in a statement the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, a national veterinary disease agency, was conducting follow-up tests to determine whether the H5N1 virus was the most highly pathogenic Asian strain.

"This first case raises many questions," Chancellor Angela Merkel said in the statement. "It shows the situation is serious. Everything will be done to prevent it from spreading."

Parts of the farm which housed more than 16,000 turkey, geese and chicken had been exempt from a poultry lock-up which has been in force across Germany since February 17 to prevent avian flu spreading from wild birds to domestic fowl during the migration period.

"The farmed geese were allowed to leave the stables for short periods to take in water, otherwise they cannot lay eggs," said Margit Gey, spokeswoman of the local authority which had granted the exemption.

Gey added that the birds which had died of avian flu had been turkeys, which were held in a separate coop and had no contact with the geese.

The first birds at the farm -- the largest of its kind in the state -- had died on Sunday, officials said.

A restricted quarantine zone with a radius of 3 km (2 miles) was established, along with a larger observation area inside a 13-km radius from the location of the H5N1-infected birds.

The European Commission in Brussels said the situation would be discussed on Wednesday afternoon by the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health in the light of the information received from the German authorities.