ANPDe NVWA at the affected company in Biddinghuizen
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 21:31
The bird flu was established last week on a laying hen farm in Biddinghuizen in Flevoland, appears to be a new variant of the virus. This is according to Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR), a research institute of Wageningen University that analyzed the outbreak. At the beginning of last month, the confinement obligation for poultry was lifted in most of the Netherlands, including Flevoland.
On July 24, the virus was detected on the organic laying hen farm. The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority then ordered the killing of the 11,000 laying hens on the farm. It was the first outbreak of bird flu since February this year.
WBVR investigated the contamination and today reports that it is a so-called highly pathogenic virus variant went, a highly contagious variant in which animals become seriously ill. According to WBVR, this variant caused high mortality among black-headed gulls. But the variant has not been found at poultry farms in the Netherlands before.
Experiments in Italy have already shown that the virus variant from gulls can spread to chickens. Such outbreaks have already been detected in that country. But according to bird flu expert Nancy Beerens of WBVR, we are now seeing for the first time that this specific variant also infects poultry in the Netherlands. “We initially thought that this variant might not do as well in poultry, but it doesn’t seem that way,” she says.
How does bird flu spread?
Avian flu is a collective name for different variants of flu viruses in birds. Most of these variants are mild in nature, but they can mutate into a serious, sickening variant. This is called highly pathogenic avian influenza. The variant that turned up in Flevoland is a new variant of the H5N1 type.
Wild migratory birds take the virus with them and thus infect other birds that stay in the Netherlands all year round, but also poultry, such as chickens. If mammals eat an infected bird, they can also become ill. Bird flu infections among mammals have previously been reported in the Netherlands in foxes and polecats, among others.
Between October 2021 and September 2022, Europe experienced an unprecedented outbreak of bird flu. Highly pathogenic variants of the virus were detected in 37 countries during that period and the virus appeared more than 2,500 times in the poultry sector.
Last May, the European health service ECDC found that the number of outbreaks with a highly pathogenic variant among poultry had decreased, but that the virus was still rampant among gulls. The health service labeled the risk to humans as ‘low’.
Bird flu spreads through wild birds such as seagulls, which can infect animals ‘on the ground’ through contaminated bird droppings. When the wild birds go out, the risk for kept birds, such as poultry, increases. “Gulls are mainly on the coast during the breeding season. But now that they have finished breeding, they become more mobile and move into the country. That coincides with the disappearance of the penning obligation,” Beerens explains the recent outbreak.
According to the expert, the risk for poultry farms may increase in the coming period. “Gulls come wherever there is something to get. And now that they have finished breeding, they start flying again and come further inland, including the young gulls,” says Beerens. They usually go out for the first time in July and August. In the coming period, Beerens emphasizes, it is therefore important to pay close attention to whether the variant spreads further.
Arjan Stegeman, professor of veterinary medicine at Utrecht University, also emphasizes that it is important to remain vigilant in the coming period. “The penning obligation has been lifted, so the exposure of poultry to bird flu has increased,” he says. But on the basis of observations in other countries, according to Stegeman, there is no reason to assume that all kinds of outbreaks will suddenly erupt in poultry in the Netherlands.
He does point out, however, that it could become tense in a month’s time with regard to the spread of bird flu. “Autumn migration starts at the beginning of September, then many wild birds come this way and they may bring in a new variant that can lead to new problems either by itself or in combination with this variant.”
Will we ever get rid of bird flu? Connoisseurs are gloomy, you can see in this video:
Will bird flu ever go away?
2023-08-01 19:31:49
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