Vets resist ban after bird-flu swan dies

A boy on the Fife harbour beach where the dead swan was found. Picture / Reuters

British Government vets have resisted calls for a ban on keeping free-range poultry outdoors as scientists confirmed yesterday that a swan in Scotland had died of bird flu.

Officials ordered all free-range birds within a 3km zone of the dead swan to be taken indoors.

But they insisted that a wider ban on keeping domestic poultry outside wasn't necessary.

Instead they asked poultry farmers within a 2500 sq km "wild bird risk" area in Scotland to voluntarily bring their birds under cover wherever possible.

The area contains 3.1 million birds of which 260,000 are free-range.

Health officials tried to calm public fears over Britain's first confirmed case of bird flu, saying the risk to humans was minimal and it was possible to catch bird flu only by close contact with living birds or their droppings.

There is, however, a bigger risk of infected wild birds passing on avian flu to free-range chickens, geese and turkeys.

Officials believe that a nationwide ban on keeping poultry outside would at this stage be too draconian.

The mute swan died at least a week ago near Cellardyke in Fife and was badly decomposed by the time it was tested for the deadly H5N1 strain of flu by scientists at the Government's Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Surrey.

Officials sought to reassure the public that the direct risk of bird flu infecting humans was extremely low and that effective biosecurity measures should be able to prevent transmission to domestic flocks.

Some countries, such as the Netherlands, have already ordered all domestic birds indoors and Bob McCracken, past president of the British Veterinary Association, said the day of a national ban on keeping birds outside was getting closer.

"The order of the day is to minimise contact between wild birds that may be infected and domestic birds.

"The most simple way of doing that is to remove them indoors," McCracken said.

"There is no doubt whatsoever that we're getting much closer to the day when moving birds indoors will become necessary.

"If I were a poultry keeper, no matter how big or small, I would wherever possible be moving my birds indoors before it becomes mandatory to do so," he said.

There are fears that other wild birds in Britain are already infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu because mute swans are non-migratory and the dead bird must have caught the virus in Britain.

- INDEPENDENT