A small farm in northeastern Slovenia quarantined after a first case of bird flu. Last week it happened in France, while 80,000 chickens are being killed north of Prague.
The avian returns to afflict Europe. Yesterday the national agency for food safety and veterinary services (Uvhvvr) confirmed the first case of H5n1 of the year in a chicken farm near Slovenska Bistrica, a town about 100 kilometers north-east of the capital Ljubljana. “Measures have been taken in the infected farm and its surroundings,” said the agency, which asked farmers to isolate their animals to prevent the spread of the disease.
Czech vets are culling 80,000 chickens on a farm in Libotenice, 45 kilometers north of Prague, where over 100,000 birds have already died of bird flu since the end of last week.
Before Christmas, there were 188,000 chickens on the farm. “The culling of the chickens is ongoing,” said state veterinary administration spokesman Petr Majer. “The numbers show that this strain, the highly pathogenic H5n1, is very aggressive and kills chickens quickly and on a large scale,” he added. Veterinarians will also destroy over a million eggs. The Czech Republic recorded 48 bird flu outbreaks this year, the highest number in history in a calendar year.
Low risk of transmission to humans
France which reported an outbreak in the foie gras-producing Landes region last week, while the UK announced earlier this month that it has culled around half a million birds this year. Belgium and the Netherlands have also imposed poultry containment measures in recent months after detecting outbreaks on some farms. At the beginning of December, outbreaks of avian influenza of subtype H5n1 were detected in Italy in domestic poultry, in particular in industrial farms of beef turkeys in the province of Verona. The risk of transmission to humans is considered low.