KEY POINTS:
LONDON - Britain gave permission today for a turkey processing plant shut down after a bird flu outbreak to resume operations.
Europe's largest turkey producer, Bernard Matthews, said it would reopen the plant on Tuesday. It was closed and 160,000 turkeys at a nearby farm were destroyed after the outbreak earlier this month.
"The Meat Hygiene Service has relicensed them to resume slaughter," an Environment Ministry spokeswoman said. "The relevant areas in the slaughterhouse have been cleansed and disinfected to meet with public health standards...There will be no risk to the public."
The slaughterhouse is inside an exclusion zone set up around the infected farm. The Environment Ministry statement said healthy birds from outside the zone could now be brought into the zone and slaughtered at the plant.
The ministry said there was still some risk that infected meat had entered the food chain in Britain, but the risk to public health was low.
- REUTERS
