Free range poultry farmers in Britain are being warned to make emergency preparations to house millions of runaround birds indoors as UK authorities remain on high alert to the spread of avian flu.
The upgraded advice from the National Farmers' Union, being issued in mailshots this week, comes as a leading supermarket stepped in yesterday to prevent panic. Although scientists have found no evidence that the H5NI bird flu virus can be passed to humans from eating infected birds, Asda put up notices at fridge points in an attempt to head off a consumer boycott. "We want to tell the public that all Asda's chicken is British and can be traced back to the farms where it was reared," a supermarket spokesman said.
Britain and the rest of Europe are remaining highly vigilant after preliminary tests indicated an outbreak of bird flu on the Greek island of Inousses. Tests to confirm it was the lethal H5NI form were continuing yesterday. The H5 virus has been confirmed in Romania and Turkey, triggering an EU ban on imports.
Customs officials have stepped up checks for illegally imported foods, using sniffer dogs at Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports after requests from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to be extra vigilant about baggage on incoming flights from Turkey and Romania.
In the UK early warning monitors have been testing wild migrating birds since Monday to detect the first sign of the H5 virus arriving in Britain. But Peter Cranswick, head of water bird monitoring at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust - which is carrying out the tests - said it was like "trying to find a needle in a haystack".
The H5 virus has proved itself capable of jumping from birds to humans, infecting some 120 people in Asia and killing 60.
Part of the British government's contingency plan is that Defra can order free range poultry farmers to bring millions of birds inside to reduce the risks.
The NFU is warning more than 300 free range poultry farmers that they must make sure everything is in place to house their birds inside if and when Defra orders them to do so.
The warning could put them in conflict with hundreds of free range egg and broiler producers whose livelihoods depend on keeping their birds as runarounds. They are being backed by the Soil Association, which believes there is no need now, or in the near future, to inhouse runaround hens.
"We need to be constantly monitoring the situation but at present we don't believe bringing birds in is appropriate," said Robin Maynard of the Soil Association. "You have a situation where you are being told avian flu could reach here in a year, or five or 10. Do farmers have to keep their poultry inside all that time? If you do this you would be destroying the most successful part of the farming sector - the growth of free range and organic."
Around 8 million out of 32 million hens in the UK bred for egg production are kept outdoors as free range. Around 5% of the 150 million broiler chickens bred each year are also free range.
Andrew Gunther, an organic poultry producer, said moves to house birds permanently indoors were counter-productive. "My birds are resistant to the range of diseases that affect conventional flocks because their immune systems have been boosted through living outdoors. I accept that as a new strain of bird flu, special measures may be required in the short-term, but these should not be at the expense of the principles of good husbandry."
Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, will today outline revised contingency plans should the virus mutate into one that spreads easily between humans. The government has ordered 14.6m courses of Tamiflu, which is shown to be effective against the virus - enough for a quarter of the population.
Some 2.5m courses have been acquired so far, and the rest is coming at 800,000 a month.
FAQ Transmission
Can you catch bird flu from live birds?
The virus is transmitted through bird faeces, so coming into contact with an infected bird would not be enough to pass on the disease. But breathing in particles of dried droppings from an infected bird would increase your risk of contracting the illness.
Can you catch it from handling dead birds?
Handling an infected carcass or getting infected blood on your hands would bring you into direct contact with the virus. It could then enter your system though a cut in your skin or if you put a finger in your mouth. But the virus is fragile once its host has died and will disintegrate after a few hours under normal conditions.
Can you catch it from eating infected birds?
Only if you eat a raw bird or one that has not been properly cooked. The most direct way of contracting the virus is by eating infected birds, and some of the cases discovered so far have been due to people drinking infected blood. But transmission is not possible if the bird is prepared properly as the virus is fragile and easily destroyed during cooking.
