UK says turkey plant can restart after bird flu

LONDON, Feb 12 (Reuters) Britain granted permission today to reopen a turkey slaughter house in Eastern England that was shut down after a bird flu outbreak.

Europe's largest turkey producer, Bernard Matthews, said it would reopen the plant tomorrow. It was shut and 160,000 turkeys at a nearby farm were destroyed after the outbreak earlier this month.

''The Meat Hygiene Service has relicensed them to resume slaughter,'' an environment ministry spokeswoman said. ''The relevant areas in the slaughterhouse have been cleansed and disinfected to meet with public health standards.'' ''There will be no risk to the public.'' Officials say bird flu is a risk to humans only if they handle live birds.

But Britain's government -- already accused in recent years of mishandling outbreaks of Mad Cow and Foot-and-Mouth diseases -- is under pressure to protect the public by being cautious, while avoiding hysteria that would cripple livestock producers.

ROW WITH HUNGARY The British outbreak has also ignited a diplomatic feud with Hungary after Britain announced last week it had concluded the disease probably entered the country in shipments of turkey meat from Hungary contaminated during a January outbreak there.

''The working hypothesis is that it came in from Hungary to the plant and then to the nearby shed,'' Environment Secretary David Miliband told Sky News television.

''We have independent, clear, scientific explanations that show a clear genetic match between the bird flu in a turkey house in the UK and bird flu in geese in Hungary. That genetic match could not have happened via wild bird transmission.'' Hungarian officials have angrily disputed this, saying they do not think processed meat can transmit the disease, and that any meat from Hungary came from outside an exclusion zone around its outbreak.

Hungary has said it will submit a report to the European Commission tomorrow which it says will prove there can be no link between the cases in Britain and Hungary.

Miliband met Hungary's ambassador in London today and said the two countries were cooperating to study the disease.

The slaughterhouse that will now reopen in Britain is inside an exclusion zone thrown up around the nearby infected farm. The environment ministry statement said healthy birds from outside the zone can now be brought into the zone and slaughtered.

Hungarian officials complained at the weekend that meat sent from Hungary to Britain was processed at the plant inside the British exclusion zone and then sent back to Hungary.

Britain's environment ministry said it was looking into whether meat has been sent abroad and whether all rules have been followed.

''The whole thing is subject to investigations to check exactly what moved where and when,'' the spokeswoman said.

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