Bird Flu Detected in England

The deadly Asian "bird flu", which has killed at least 165 people since 2003, has been confirmed on a commercial turkey farm in eastern England, health authorities said Saturday.

British officials said the disease had killed 2,600 turkeys on the Bernard Matthews farm in Suffolk county, northeast of London. All 159,000 turkeys at the farm are being destroyed as a precautionary measure. Saturday BBC Television footage showed thousands of carcasses being dumped into trucks.

The outbreak is the first confirmed case of among British domestic poultry in more than 15 years. There is increasing concern that birds migrating from Asia are may be carrying the disease through Africa, the Middle East and deeper into the heart of Europe. As of yet there have been no reported cases of human infection in Europe or the United States.

David Nabarro, bird flu coordinator for the United Nations, told the BBC that it was "exceedingly unlikely" that the outbreak in Britain would lead to human infections. "The numbers of human cases are very, very small indeed, even though the virus has been moving through poultry in at least 50 countries in the last year," he said. "This is really not a human disease; it is a poultry disease."

Bernard Matthews officials issued a statement Saturday confirming the outbreak but noting that "none of the affected birds have entered the food chain and there is no risk to consumers." A company spokesman asked for all further press inquiries to be directed at government officials.

The company's Web site says Bernard Matthews is the biggest turkey producer in Europe, raising 8 million birds a year on 54 farms in Britain. The company does about $800 million a year in business and employs more than 6,000 people, according to that Web site.

Defra officials said the H5N1 strain has been confirmed in birds in at least 45 countries. It first appeared in the European Union last year and has been confirmed in wild birds in at least 13 E.U. countries, officials said. Britain is the seventh E.U. country where H5N1 has been found in domestic poultry, following France, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Romania and Hungary. (AP)

( BBC, AP, Tribune)