Turkey says culling for bird flu complete

EU spokesman Philip Tod said “all the tests carried out to date have so far proved negative for avian influenza.” He said the tests were being carried out with the assistance of EU experts.

Samples from the Turkish birds have been sent to Britain for confirmation. Authorities there said they expect results on Friday.

In the quarantined zone in western Turkey, officials had culled some 7,600 fowl by today and were now searching for any birds they might have missed, the governor’s office said.

The government was to start compensating villagers for their domestic birds’ slaughter as of tomorrow, it added. Experts had warned the government that villagers would try to hide their poultry if they were not swiftly compensated.

Posters showing villagers how to protect themselves againt becoming infected were distributed in the two-mile quarantined zone where some 1,800 birds had died.

The distribution of posters followed reports of delays in passing on information and complaints from villagers that children in affected areas were being sent to round up birds for destruction. Turkish television showed some villagers delivering birds barehanded to officials wearing white plastic suits and face masks.

The local governor’s office, however, said that no Turkish citizens had been diagnosed with the infection, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Sales of poultry have dropped 20 to 40% in Turkey while sales of anti-flu medication rocketed, the Milliyet newspaper reported. Authorities at Istanbul airport were taking the temperature of visitors who appeared sick or arrived from regions in Asia that have experienced large outbreaks, Milliyet said, citing Vedat Muftuoglu, an official at the governor’s office.

Preliminary tests detected bird flu at a farm in Balikesir province after some 1,800 birds died on a farm last week. Scientists have narrowed the disease in Turkey down to an H5 type virus, but have not determined if it is the H5N1 strain that health officials are particularly worried about.

Bird flu is difficult to diagnose correctly and officials said samples were being sent to a laboratory in Britain today for testing for the H5N1 strain that experts are tracking for fear it could mutate to become a dangerous human virus.

Britain updated its travel advisory for Turkey today, saying travellers were unlikely to be affected but nevertheless cautioning them to avoid visiting live animal markets, poultry farms and other areas in Turkey where they may come into contact with birds.

Serbia today issued a hunting ban in an effort to prevent an outbreak of bird flu in the Balkan country.

The Agriculture Ministry said it had banned hunting of 12 kinds of migratory birds that could bring in bird flu while flying over Serbia en route from the north, mainly from Russia.

Late yesterday, the governor of Istanbul province confirmed that around 15 pigeons were found dead on a roof at a farm in Catalca, less than 30 miles west of Istanbul, the Anatolia news agency reported.

It was not clear what the pigeons died of and samples were sent to an Istanbul laboratory for testing, Governor Muammer Guler said.

Nihat Pakdil, deputy under-secretary of the Turkish Agriculture Ministry, was quoted by Hurriyet newspaper as saying that the culling of thousands of birds in the zone was complete.

“The disease has been contained. The destruction (of animals) is completed. There’s no need to worry,” he said. “All of Turkey, particularly marshy areas, are under observation and being scanned.”

H5N1 has swept through poultry populations in Asia since 2003, infecting 117 humans and killing 60 people, mostly poultry workers, and resulting in the deaths of more than 100 million birds.