Belgian Farms Culls 150,000 Chickens as Bird Flu Sweeps across Europe

A BELGIAN chicken farm was forced to cull over 151,000 chickens when it discovered the latest outbreak in Europe’s sweeping Bird Flu problem.

On Wednesday the highly contagious H5N5 Bird Flu virus was confirmed on the farm, having killed 600 chickens since November 18th. By Friday the farm, which is situated near the French border, had culled 151,000 birds and is undergoing efforts to trace and destroy its food products according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

Since its outbreak in the summer, H2N5 Bird Flu has swept across Europe affecting farms in Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Russia, Sweden, and the UK. The worst affected country is the Netherlands, where hundreds of thousands of birds were destroyed this month alone in an effort to prevent further outbreaks of a ‘highly contagious strain of the H5 variance’. Across the continent, over 1.6 million chickens and ducks have been culled, posing major financial issues to Europe’s bird farming industry.

It is very rare for humans to contact Avian flu, though animal to human transmissions have been recorded in the past.

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