Is Europe about to face a bird-flu outbreak?

CDE.NEWS has been following a recent spike in reported cases of bird-flu across Europe.

Denmark has ordered 25,000 chickens to be culled after finding H5N8 bird flu on a farm, authorities said on Monday, effectively halting the country’s poultry and egg exports to countries outside the European Union for at least three months.

The cull comes after cases of bird flu have been found in wild birds in the west of the country in recent days, while a series of outbreaks have been registered across Europe in the past weeks.

The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said in a statement no cases of human contagion had been registered across Europe and Monday’s find had been reported to the EU authorities.

Earlier on Monday, Germany ordered 16,100 turkeys slaughtered after finding the same type of bird flu on a farm in northern Germany.

France has also detected a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu in the pet section of a shop in one of Corsica’s main cities, the farm ministry said on Monday, in a latest outbreak of the disease in Europe in recent weeks.

France had already put part of the country on high alert for bird flu after cases of the disease were reported in western Europe since last month.

In a statement, the ministry said all the birds in the shop have been euthanised, adding that the whole of France would be put on high alert level as of Tuesday.

Earlier this month, the Dutch authorities are racing to contain a bird flu outbreak at two poultry farms and the same strain – H5N8 – has also infected chickens and wild birds in north Germany.

A farm in the eastern Dutch town of Puiflijk and another nearby have been told to cull 200,000 chickens.