UK - Poultry to be registered in fight against bird flu

The government plans to launch a national register of poultry businesses which a farmers' spokesman said on Friday would enable authorities to tackle any future outbreak of bird flu swiftly. From next month, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will start inviting new registrations from businesses raising chickens, ducks and other fowl. A spokesman for the National Farmers' Union (NFU) said that if an outbreak occurred, the new register would enable authorities to quickly identify other poultry populations in the area, and take rapid action to contain the disease. "A national register allows you to pinpoint where an outbreak happens and identify zones that might possibly be affected," Dale Atkinson told Reuters. He said the national register would bring in smaller commercial poultry keepers, but it was not immediately clear if it would also encompass households that own fowl. Peter Bradnock, head of the British Poultry Council, which represents keepers, processors, distributors and slaughterhouses, said the register could include small commercial poultry keepers as well as larger ones, but perhaps not households with one or two birds. "It depends where the cutoff is," he told Reuters. But he said small clusters of fowl were at risk from avian flu as well as larger commercial poultry populations. "Smallholders are just as susceptible as commercial operations," Bradnock said. Currently, Defra, the NFU and individual poultry organisations, hold information separately, but no central register exists. "Commercial poultry keepers will be asked to register their flocks as part of an initiative, backed by the industry, to step up surveillance of the avian influenza virus," a Defra statement said on Thursday. Bird flu, which experts fear could mutate into a form that jumps easily from person to person and unleash a global pandemic, has killed more than 60 people in four Asian countries during this period. All human deaths from avian flu have so far been in Asia but the H5N1 strain was detected this month in birds in Russia, Turkey and Romania. Further tests are being carried out in Europe on a bird from Greece.