Nearly 200,000 poultry culled in consecutive bird flu outbreaks on Dutch farms

　　China News Service, The Hague, July 27. The Dutch authorities informed that on July 26 and 27, two farms in the north and east of the Netherlands broke out one after another, and nearly 200,000 poultry were culled.

　　According to the announcement issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the Netherlands on the 26th, a bird flu case was found in a chicken farm in the town of Waadhoeke in the northern Friesland province of the Netherlands, suspected of being infected with a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus.

　　In order to prevent the spread of the epidemic, about 105,000 broiler chickens were culled on the farms involved; no isolation measures were taken because there were no other farms within a radius of 1 km; the other two farms within a radius of 3 km had undergone epidemic prevention inspections and will be tested in the future. 14 days under close monitoring.

　　At the same time, the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Administration issued a "blockade order" to 10 farms within a 10-kilometer radius of each other, requiring that poultry, eggs, meat, fertilizers and other products should not be shipped to the outside world from now on, and people should not hunt in these areas.

　　On the 27th, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the Netherlands once again notified that a bird flu case was found in a duck farm in the town of Dalfsen, Upper IJssel Province, in the east of the Netherlands, and it was also suspected of being infected with a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus.

　　In order to prevent the spread of the epidemic, about 88,000 ducks on the farms involved were culled; no isolation measures were taken because there were no other farms within a radius of 1 km; the other 6 farms within a radius of 3 km had undergone epidemic prevention inspections and will be tested in the future. 14 days under close monitoring.

　　At the same time, the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Administration issued a "blockade order" to 26 farms within 10 kilometers of each other, requiring that poultry, eggs, meat, fertilizer and other products should not be shipped to the outside world from now on, and people should not hunt in these areas.

　　As a major exporter of poultry products in Europe, the Netherlands has more than 2,000 poultry egg farms, with an annual net export of more than 6 billion eggs. However, since last year, an outbreak of bird flu has occurred in at least 50 farms in the Netherlands, and the authorities have culled about 3.5 million eggs in total. poultry.

　　In addition to the current round of avian influenza, a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus was discovered in wild birds in the Netherlands in 2016, and then quickly spread to poultry farms. The epidemic lasted for more than half a year before subsiding. The insect company used poisonous pesticides to kill insects on farms, resulting in the eggs produced by the farms becoming "poisonous eggs". In the end, the Netherlands was forced to recall millions of problematic eggs, culling tens of thousands of poultry, and economic losses of more than 30 million euros. .

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