Bird flu discovered at Dutch farm; 216,000 chickens to be culled

AMSTERDAM, Jan 24 (Reuters) – Authorities discovered an outbreak of a highly-contagious strain of bird flu at a farm in the Netherlands and said they would cull about 170,000 chickens, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Nearby farms in the province of Noord Holland will be sealed off while tests for the H5N1 virus are conducted and to establish whether it has spread, the ministry said.

An outbreak of the virus was also reported by the ministry at a farm in the southern province of Noord Brabant, a separate statement said. Roughly 46,000 broiler chickens would be culled there, it said.

Hundreds of thousands of chickens, ducks, turkeys, and dozens of wild birds have been culled in the Netherlands since outbreaks of the disease began in 2021.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; editing by David Goodman and Jason Neely)