Taiwan has removed the UK from its list of countries free of avian influenza and banned live poultry imports from the country after an outbreak was confirmed at a poultry farm in England, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday.
The highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N6 strain was confirmed at a farm near Frodsham, where its 13,500 broiler chickens are to be culled, the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement, citing a report by the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The department said that it established 3km and 10km control zones around the infected site to limit the risk of the disease spreading.
To prevent the spread of bird flu locally, the bureau said that it removed the UK from its list of countries considered free of the virus and from yesterday, imposed a ban on imports of live poultry and hatching eggs from the country.
Importers of live birds from the UK would mainly be affected by the ban, the bureau said, adding that since 2018, 79 live birds have been imported from the UK, including goshawks and red-tailed buzzards.
With avian influenza strains most common during the fall and winter, outbreaks have recently been reported in Israel, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Russia and Vietnam.
Taiwan should prepare for the possibility of a bird flu pandemic, as thousands of raptors usually fly over the country in autumn as they migrate south for the winter, the bureau said.
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