Dutch let poultry outdoors as bird flu fears ease

AMSTERDAM, Nov 22 (Reuters) The Dutch Agriculture Ministry has lifted an order on keeping poultry indoors, introduced to protect flocks from the threat of avian flu from migrating birds, as fears of a possible outbreak receded.

''The ban can be lifted because the monitoring of wild birds in the European Union showed no traces of the disease and there were no outbreaks reported in neighbouring countries,'' the ministry said in a statement yesterday.

Scientists have suggested that migratory birds play an important role in the spread of the deadly H5N1 virus, which originated in Asia and has killed 152 people worldwide so far.

The Netherlands, Europe's second biggest poultry producer after France, ordered birds indoors on Sept 1. Alternatively, farmers were allowed to construct an enclosure that would make contact with wild birds impossible.

An order to feed and give water only indoors to commercial poultry remains in place, the ministry said.

Europe was on alert to protect poultry from bird flu in the past two months as billions of wild birds migrated to African wintering grounds, raising fears the H5N1 strain could return to Europe.

''It's not clear why the virus remained so quiet this autumn,'' Dutch Agriculture Minister Cees Veerman said.

''But we remain on alert because the threat stays in the long term,'' Veerman said, adding he would order poultry indoors again if signs of a possible outbreak emerged.

The Netherlands, which is also a top world poultry exporter, has never reported H5N1, found last year in several other European Union countries, in commercial poultry.

Earlier this year, the Netherlands found a low-pathogenic H7N7 bird flu strain at a farm but it stamped out the disease quickly and prevented a major outbreak.

A more aggressive strain of H7N7 hit the Netherlands in 2003 and led to the culling of 30 million birds, about a third of the poultry flock, as well as one human death.

The government launched a vaccination campaign earlier this year to reduce the risk of the disease.

But most farmers preferred not to vaccinate as they feared that importing countries would refuse to buy their meat and eggs because of consumer worries about possible health risks.

REUTERS SSC VA RAI0949