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HOLTON, England : Britain has recorded its first outbreak of potentially lethal H5N1 bird flu in farmed poultry, but authorities said the threat was contained and farmers insisted it was still "safe to eat".
Police threw a tight cordon around the turkey farm in the eastern English county of Suffolk after experts confirmed that the H5 virus first detected there Friday was in fact the deadly strain which can be transmitted to people.
"Samples from the infected establishment were immediately sent to the Community Reference Laboratory in Weybridge, which has this morning swiftly confirmed the disease to be the H5N1 strain of avian influenza," the European Commission said in a statement.
Further tests are under way in Britain to find out whether it is the Asian strain, which has killed more people than the strain which appeared in the European Union last year, it added Saturday.
The virus was found at a factory farm run by one of Britain's biggest poultry producers, Bernard Matthews, in the village of Holton, north-east of London.
The farm is in the heart of England's chicken and turkey-rearing region and now faces having to slaughter as many as 160,000 birds to contain the virus.
A three-kilometre (1.8-mile) protection zone and 10-kilometre surveillance zone have been thrown around the farm, while strict movement controls are in place and farmers are being told to keep poultry indoors.
Police have cordoned off the farm itself and, at the gates of the meat factory next door, officials were disinfecting vehicles as they moved on and off the site.
Britain's environment ministry said it was set to impose further restrictions, adding it was banning bird shows and pigeon racing nationwide following the outbreak.
In a statement, Bernard Matthews reassured customers that it had strong biosecurity measures in place.
"While Bernard Matthews can confirm that there has been a case of H5N1 avian influenza at its Holton site, it is important to stress that none of the affected birds have entered the food chain and there is no risk to consumers," it said.
Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers' Union, told BBC television that shoppers should not stop buying poultry.
"There's enormous concern, both for the whole farming community, the producers of poultry in the United Kingdom, and making sure we get the message about how well this will be managed and controlled," he said.
"We're encouraging all farmers to be incredibly vigilant, look at their flocks carefully.
"We do need to reassure consumers, however, that this is not an issue about safety of poultry. It's completely safe to eat."
It is still not clear how the virus was transmitted to the farm, where animals are housed in warehouses.
But Fred Landeg, Britain's deputy chief veterinary officer, told a press conference that he believed it had been carried by a wild bird and that it was a "recent introduction".
"No birds have left the premises and no product has left the premises so the disease on that basis has been contained," he said, adding that all birds on the site were about 56 days old.
He said that there were "no plans" to vaccinate birds and described the risk to members of the public as "negligible".
Professor John Oxford, a virologist at London's Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry, told the BBC that the "most likely" explanation for the outbreak was that a small bird had come in through a ventilation shaft.
Government vets were called to the farm earlier this week after the death of more than 2,000 turkeys.
In March 2006, a wild swan found in Cellardyke, on the east Scotland coast, was found to have the H5N1 variant of the virus.
The H5N1 strain has killed more than 160 people worldwide since 2003, most of them in Asia.
- AFP /ls
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