UK Bird flu 'almost identical' to Hungary virus
Pastor Dale Morgan
UK Bird flu 'almost identical' to Hungary virus*
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor and Natalie Paris
Last Updated: 7:05pm GMT 13/02/2007
The virus responsible for a bird flu outbreak at a Suffolk farm was
"almost identical" to the strain that infected geese in southern
Hungary, Government scientists have found.
Analysis by experts at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) shows
that the H5N1 virus which killed turkeys at Bernard Matthews' plant in
Holton was 99.96% similar to the strain which caused the Hungarian outbreak.
Deputy chief vet Fred Landeg said that investigation revealed the two
strains were "essentially identical" but that there is yet no evidence
of "illegal or unsafe movements of poultry products from Hungary to the UK".
advertisement
On the back of advice from the VLA, Mr Miliband told Jozsef Graf, the
Hungarian agriculture minister yesterday, that the similarity between
the virus found on at Holton and in Hungary was too marked for it have
been transmitted by a wild bird.
The Hungarian authorities were told that the outbreak of the H5N1 strain
in Suffolk could only be explained by transmission from poultry to
poultry, not via wild birds. As such, it is the first case of its kind
in Europe.
Bernard Matthews last night faced allegations that it had failed to
reveal the likely route by which bird flu entered the country after it
emerged that inspectors only discovered suspect imports of Hungarian
poultry by accident.
Leaked minutes from a meeting of Cobra, the Cabinet's emergency planning
committee, show that inspectors searching the company's plant at Holton,
Suffolk, found the link via a wrapper in a bin.
Bernard Matthews Hungarian subsidiary (Saga Foods), Imports from Hungary
only discovered by accident
Workers prepare poultry at the Bernard Matthews Hungarian subsidiary,
Saga Foods, 124 miles from Budapest
The wrapper confirmed that the Suffolk plant had been receiving meat
from a slaughterhouse 20 miles from the outbreak in domestic geese in
southern Hungary.
Until then the company and its PR firm, Hill and Knowlton, had said that
the only imports were from Bernard Matthews' Saga Foods subsidiary, 165
miles away from the Hungarian outbreak.
David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, was pressed last night to
explain whether the chance discovery had prompted the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to investigate a Hungarian link. But
he said only that Defra was examining transit logs to determine the
movement of meat between Hungary and Suffolk.
Asked if he had "full confidence" that Bernard Matthews, the firm, was
co-operating fully with the investigation, he said: "It would be wrong
for me to make any conclusions until we have all the facts."
Mr Miliband is understood to have been told about the imports only last
Thursday morning, when the company finally produced documents showing
the provenance of its imported turkey meat.
The revelation came after the Meat Hygiene Service cleared the
slaughterhouse at Holton in Suffolk. It resumes work today, having been
disinfected and relicensed under European Union rules.
One government official called the decision "incredible". But Defra
said: "The company is within its rights to begin processing again as
long as the birds come from outside the zone."