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Shock as H5N1 wipes out UK turkey farm

Confusion and criticism have been sparked after Europe’s largest turkey producer was hit hard by the deadly H5N1 virus. Nearly 160,000 birds were packed into trucks to be gassed 200 miles away at a facility in Cheddleton, England. Officials say the bird flu virus has been contained to the farm in rural Holton in Suffolk county on the UK’s eastern coast.

Quarantine

First an area of two miles or 1.6 km was put in place but this was quickly extended to six miles or nine km after the Avian virus was diagnosed which was initially thought to be E.coli. As a further preventative measure the buffer zone now extends to 800 square miles across several counties surrounding the area.

Tamiflu was issued to workers. The Department of Health has stockpiled enough Tamiflu antivirals to cover a quarter of the population, as advised by scientists, and conducted a massive preparatory exercise last week, Ms Hewitt told ITV1′s The Sunday Edition.

Mystery

But mystery deepened over how the disease had got into what Bernard Matthews called “the most bio-secure” plant in Britain, with other turkey breeders and scientists discounting the theory that a wild bird had got into the closed plant. Some are suspecting the virus came from Hungary in eastern Europe.

David Nabarro, who heads the UN department co-ordinating the global fight against the virus, said the world should expect more avian flu outbreaks in the coming months. Experts at the European Union laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, confirmed the avian flu which killed more than 2,000 birds on the farm in Suffolk is the highly pathogenic Asian strain.

Watch the SKY News video of this bird flu outbreak on our home page.