Dutch to Order Poultry Indoors From March
Date: 10-Feb-06
Country: NETHERLANDS
"The Minister (Cees Veerman) will issue an order for birds to be kept indoors from around March - it could be earlier or later," a farm ministry spokeswoman said.
Last week Germany announced a similar measure from March 1, while the EU is considering extending measures to keep poultry indoors to areas that have not been considered at high risk for bird flu.
Wild birds have been blamed for spreading the disease westwards from Asia.
The deadly H5N1 avian flu strain arrived in Nigeria earlier this week in what is Africa's first bird flu outbreak.
H5N1 avian influenza has swept through flocks in Asia and into Europe, killing or forcing the culling of 200 million birds. It sometimes infects people and has infected 161 documented patients, killing 86 of them.
Bird flu has killed four people in Turkey, bordering the European Union, while Russia and Kazakhstan are preparing for fresh outbreaks of bird flu in poultry due to migrating birds returning for spring.
The Netherlands, one of the world's leading poultry exporters, suffered a bird flu outbreak in 2003, different from the H5N1 strain, that led to the culling of 30 million birds, over a third of all Dutch poultry.
