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BRUSSELS : The European Commission on Monday confirmed the first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in the European Union since last summer, after tests on Hungarian geese proved positive.
European Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou urged all member states "to step up their vigilance" and to reassess their risk levels following the outbreak at a goose farm in southeastern Hungary, his spokesman said.
An EU-approved laboratory in Britain had confirmed that it "was indeed a case of the H5N1 strain," the spokesman, Philip Tod, told a press conference in Brussels.
Meanwhile, the Hungarian authorities announced a suspected second outbreak in the southeast of the country and said they had responded by slaughtering all 9,400 geese on the farm.
"Animals suspected of carrying bird flu were found Friday on a goose farm in Derekegyhaza," about 170 kilometres southeast of Budapest, the agriculture ministry said.
Samples from that farm were also being sent to the laboratory in Weybridge, near London, which the Commission uses to confirm such cases.
Tod stressed that in both instances all EU rules had been carried out, including the slaughter of infected flocks, disinfection of affected farms and the setting up of safety zones within a 10 kilometre perimeter.
While assuring that no further measures were necessary, Tod said fresh outbreaks could not be ruled out.
Commissioner Kyprianou was meeting with EU agriculture ministers on Monday and would stress "the need to remain vigilant now that winter has finally arrived in Europe and we are in the period of high risk," his spokesman said.
The first bird flu tests were carried out at Weybridge after Hungarian authorities last week reported the suspected outbreak among a flock of geese in Csongrad County in the southeast of the country.
Hungarian authorities slaughtered the original infected flock and established a three-kilometre protection zone and 10 kilometre surveillance zone around the infected farm.
However, that did not prevent nearby non-EU countries from taking their own measures, with Russia, Croatia and Serbia banning Hungarian poultry exports.
It is the first incidence in the European Union of the highly pathogenic avian influenza since August 2006, when one case occurred in a zoo in Dresden, eastern Germany. The virus has killed about 160 people worldwide since late 2003.
Between late 2005 and the summer of 2006, 13 EU nations - plus Romania which has since become a member - uncovered cases of the H5N1 strain.
Jean-Luc Angot, deputy director-general of the World Organisation for Animal Health, said in Paris on Monday that the virus found this month in Hungary was "99.4 percent identical" to the strain that caused outbreaks across Europe last year.
The extremely close similarity suggests the virus holed up among birds in Hungary, enabling it to survive after the end of the outbreak there at the end of spring, he said.
Earlier this month the European Union decided to lift its ban on live birds entering the bloc but laid down strict conditions for their import.
EU food chain and veterinary experts decided to replace the ban with strict new guidelines that go beyond the rules that were in place before the embargo was imposed in October 2005 amid an earlier bird flu scare.
The origin of the Hungarian outbreak is still being investigated, but wild birds are considered "a strong possibility" by the European Commission.
The disease situation will be reviewed at an EU expert meeting on Friday.
The vast majority of the deaths from bird flu have been in Asia, with Europe so far only having limited exposure to the virus.
Last week Japan and Hong Kong reported fresh cases of strains of the virus, and Indonesian authorities said an eight-year-old girl had become the latest person in the country to die from it.
Experts fear that the H5N1 virus will mutate and become easily transmissible from human to human, causing a pandemic like the Spanish flu in 1918 which killed millions of people. - AFP/de
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