Avian flu's return to Britain — weeks before the Christmas holidays — is another blow to farmers struggling after livestock herds were hit this year by foot-and-mouth disease and bluetongue.
Thousands of free-range turkeys, ducks and geese were being slaughtered Wednesday at a farm in Redgrave in Suffolk, about 130 kilometres northeast of London.
An outbreak at the farm was confirmed the day before as H5N1, the same virulent strain that has killed more than 200 people around the world.
Bird flu has killed or prompted the slaughter of millions of birds worldwide since late 2003, when it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks.
It has also killed at least 206 people since 2003. Although experts say most were probably infected through direct contact with sick birds, they fear the virus could mutate into one that spreads easily among people.
The source of the Suffolk outbreak has not been identified but was closely related to strains found in the Czech Republic and Germany earlier this year, said Fred Landeg, the U.K.'s acting chief veterinary officer.
If the bird flu spreads, it could devastate the U.K.'s hugely profitable Christmas trade in poultry.
A three kilometre protection zone and a 10 kilometre surveillance zone were set up around the infected farm, and further restrictions were imposed in Suffolk and much of the neighbouring county of Norfolk.
Landeg said Britain has successfully contained an outbreak of H5N1 earlier this year in Suffolk that led to the slaughter of 160,000 turkeys.
"With respect to this outbreak, there is still some uncertainty. We are at a very early stage of the investigation, and no two outbreaks of disease are ever the same," he said.
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