Britain probes deadly bird flu outbreak

HOLTON, England, Feb 5 (Reuters) Officials were investigating the cause of a deadly bird flu outbreak on a farm in Suffolk today as workers culled thousands of turkeys to prevent the virus from spreading.

The government's emergency planning committee, Cobra, was due to meet today to co-ordinate the response.

Nearly 160,000 birds were being gassed and incinerated after the discovery of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian flu on a farm at Holton run by Europe's largest turkey producer, Bernard Matthews.

The slaughter of turkeys at the farm started late on Saturday with the dead birds being transported in sealed trucks to be incinerated. The cull is expected to end later today.

About 2,500 turkeys died in the initial outbreak of the virus.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the virus had been confined to the farm near Lowestoft.

''I am satisfied that everybody has moved as quickly as they possibly could have,'' Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw told BBC radio. ''We are exploring very carefully what the possible avenues for that infection might have been.'' Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said yesterday the government was preparing ''very, very seriously'' for the remote risk of a flu pandemic.

Workers wearing white protective suits, black gloves and masks loaded the turkeys into crates to be gassed at the huge farm and processing factory on a former airfield.

Farm workers have been offered anti-viral drugs and tight restrictions have been imposed on the way birds are housed and moved.

Within 3 km of the farm, poultry must be kept indoors. A surveillance zone covers the area within 10 km of the outbreak.

In that area, bird fairs are banned and there are restrictions on bird movements. Red road signs demarcated the area.

Poultry must be separated from wild birds and movement must be licensed in a much wider area, covering more than 2,000 sq km.

Defra said the virus was the same pathogenic Asian strain found last month in Hungary where an outbreak among geese on a farm prompted the slaughter of thousands of birds.

That outbreak followed a relative lull in cases of H5N1 among European poultry since hundreds of turkeys died at a farm in eastern France about a year ago.

A Bernard Matthews spokesman said a high mortality rate among the birds was first spotted on Wednesday.

The strain tends to be transmitted to poultry by infected migrating wildfowl.

It has killed at least 165 people worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia, and more than 200 million birds have died from it, or been killed to prevent its spread.

It has not yet fulfilled scientists' worst fears by mutating into a form that could be easily transmitted between humans and possibly cause a global pandemic.

REUTERS DKA RN1622