Belgium ordered all poultry to be kept indoors starting Thursday following the detection of an outbreak of bird flu, the federal food safety agency said on Wednesday, as Europe faces a sharp resurgence of the disease.
The spread of bird flu sparked concern among governments and the poultry industry after it killed or led to the culling of hundreds of millions of poultry in recent years, disrupting supplies, driving up food prices and raising the risk of a new pandemic.
Neighbor France made a similar decision with Belgium on Tuesday and the Netherlands last week.
An outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, was detected this week on a turkey farm near Diksmuide in northern Belgium, the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) said earlier on Wednesday.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu killed 319 birds, while the rest of the flock of 67,110 people was culled, the Paris-based WOAH said in the report published on its website, citing Belgian authorities.
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The WOAH also said Wednesday that Slovakia had reported an outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm, in a sign that the deadly virus continues to spread rapidly in Europe.
in your last outbreakThe Netherlands will cull around 161,000 chickens at a poultry farm in the country’s central-eastern region after bird flu was detected there, the government said in a statement on Wednesday.
