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Bird flu continues spread across Europe and beyond

A soldier of the German armed forces Bundeswehr wears a gas mask as he works at a bird flu disinfection point on Sunday in Stralsund on the Baltic Sea, northeastern Germany. PHOTO: AFP

Bird flu continued its advance across Europe on Sunday with more infected birds found in Germany and Italy.

The H5N1 strain of the flu which can be potentially fatal to humans was detected for the first time on the German mainland in the northeast state of Mecklenburg-Pomerania, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 61, animal health experts said.

In Italy, the Institute of Animal Health in the north eastern city of Padua announced the virus had been detected in a total of 16 birds in the country.

H5N1 was also confirmed in Tuzla and Navodari on the shores of the Black Sea in Romania, bringing to 33 the number of sites where it has been found nationwide, a veterinary official said.

Samples from the latest Romanian cases were sent to the EU reference laboratory in Britain to establish whether it was the highly pathogenic form of the H5N1 virus.

French authorities vowed to spare no effort in containing avian influenza after the country became the sixth in the EU, and the most westerly, to be hit by the virus.

Europe's top producer and the world's fourth-largest exporter of poultry, France confirmed late on Saturday that H5N1 had been identified in a wild duck found dead in the central-eastern Ain department.

French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand stressed that the dead duck was an isolated case, although food authorities said tests were continuing on some 15 birds found dead in various parts of the country.

"There will be no financial or economic obstacle in preparing France in the face of these risks," he said, as the country's main farmers' union called for more state help in tackling the threat.

"Eat chicken!" French Agriculture Minister Dominique Bussereau urged his compatriots on Sunday, seeking to ease consumer concerns.

"The first step consumers can take in solidarity [with chicken farmers] is not to stop eating chicken," Bussereau told Europe 1 radio.

"If after this broadcast you had a bit of time to eat some chicken, that would be a very good thing," he said.

The plight of EU poultry producers, faced with plummeting sales, was due to be discussed by agriculture ministers yesterday. Sales are down by 70 percent in Italy, 40 to 50 percent in Greece and 15 percent in France.

But in Brussels officials held out little hope in the short term.

"We're sympathetic but there is very little we, from the European budget, can actually do," a European Commission spokesman said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday surveyed measures being taken to combat bird flu on the Baltic island of Ruegen, as army disinfection experts deployed to curb the spread of the virus.

Germany has begun enforcing an order to keep all poultry indoors, joining the Netherlands, Slovenia, Denmark, France, Greece, Luxembourg and Sweden in doing so.

Britain, too, said the risk of bird flu there was "more likely" following the French case.

"It's not inevitable, but it is clear, obviously, that it's more likely than it was when it was further away," British Agriculture Minister Ben Bradshaw said.

Nearly 35,000 birds were due to be culled from yesterday morning in Romania, a top official for the Constanta region, Danut Culetu said.

In Nigeria, where there have been several major H5N1 outbreaks, UN health officials inspected an affected farm and assessed clean-up operations.

A team of WHO experts went through the Bakabo Farm on the outskirts of the northern city of Kano with local monitors to check the health of farm workers.

Egypt, the second African country after Nigeria to report the presence of H5N1, said the virus was spreading.

Since it was first detected in three Egyptian governorates on Thursday, H5N1 had been reported in at least six others. Most cases have been in small domestic coops rather than major industrial poultry farms, according to an official from the supreme national committee to combat bird flu.

Bangladesh told its border guards to be extra vigilant to prevent the smuggling of live birds or poultry products from neighboring India, a minister said.
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