Farms emptied to prevent spread of bird flu in the Netherlands

With the preventive culling, the government wants to prevent the virus from spreading further in the most poultry-dense area in the Netherlands. The bird flu virus (probably highly pathogenic) was diagnosed on 15 April at a layer farm in Barneveld with about 34,000 chickens.

Bird flu outbreak on a duck farm

Earlier in the week the virus was found at a duck farm in Lunteren, bordering Barneveld, after it seemed to have calmed down for a few weeks. Agriculture Minister Henk Staghouwer calls the new outbreaks in the heart of the poultry sector a major setback.

When asked, poultry organisation, Avined, states that there is no reason to suspect that there is a link between the infections in Lunteren and Barneveld, given the relative distance between the companies and the fact that they operate in completely different poultry sectors.

Many poultry farms nearby

There are many other poultry farms around the infected farm in Barneveld, in addition to the 7 within a 1 km radius. There are 19 other poultry farms within the 3 km zone. These are sampled by the NVWA for avian influenza. In addition, these farms will be intensively monitored over the next 14 days for symptoms that may indicate the disease.

There are 229 other poultry farms in a 10 km zone. A transport ban applies immediately as usual for this zone. The transport ban in the 3 km and 10 km zone applies to all birds and breeding and consumption eggs from a location with birds. The ban also applies to bird manure and used litter, and to other animals and animal products from poultry farms.

In total, there have now been 34 outbreaks of bird flu on commercial poultry farms in the Netherlands since last autumn.