LONDON - The British Government has defended its handling of the H5N1 avian flu outbreak in Suffolk as scientists continue to investigate how the deadly virus penetrated the supposedly biosecure facility on a Bernard Matthews turkey farm.
Workers at the farm, normally paid £6-£8 an hour, were offereddouble time yesterday to come and help with the task of gassing the 159,000 birds but many declined. Those who joined the cull were given protective clothing, vaccinations and issued with Tamiflu tablets to ward off possible infection.
Ben Bradshaw, the Environment Minister, denied there had been a delay in testing for the virus or establishing an exclusion zone around the affected farm after the birds started to die last Wednesday. Culling of the turkeys at the farm was completed yesterday.
The outbreak of the H5N1 virus at the farm in Holton, Suffolk, is the biggest among commercial poultry in Europe. Bradshaw said: "There were a small number of birds that died [initially] but nothing unusual in a flock of this size. You do get birds dying in those sorts of numbers.
"It wasn't until [Friday], when more than 800 birds died, that the Bernard Matthews vet quite rightly informed the local state veterinary service and we immediately put restrictions on that farm. So this idea that there was some delay is simply wrong."
David Miliband, Secretary for Rural Affairs, told MPs the risk to the public had been assessed by health experts as negligible.
Experts discounted suggestions that the virus, which survives for only a few hours outside the body, might have been brought to Suffolk on a lorry or the boots of a worker from Hungary, where there was an outbreak of the same strain of H5N1 among geese.
