SCFCAH Establish Bird Flu Regulations

In Brussels last week, the representatives of all EU states sat around a table to agree on more guidelines and ideas for the prevention of bird flu in Europe. Thee called the meeting was urgently called in response to a case of the H5N1 virus being located on a German farm. The relevant Committee called the Food Chain and Animal Health or SCFCAH for short is responsible for the monitoring of, and prevention guidelines for bird flu. The final out come was to set up a danger zone of three kilometres from the outbreak and a look-out zone of ten kilometres.

The regulations call for very strict movement of people and poultry rules as well as bio security controls to the 3km zone. This is to immediately stop any movements of the virus and to increase the chances of it being contained. The representatives of the EU countries were very concious of the need to reassure the general public, poultry farmers and others of the safety of eating chicken and other birds.

The SCFCAH also looked at the possiblilty of vaccinating of birds in zoos and border regulations for the movement of birds from Croatia Turkey and Romania. It was agreed that the vaccination of zoo birds should be monitored by EU officials and be completed very quickly. Health certificates were part of the process for vaccinated birds and movement of the zoo birds was to be very closely monitored. The EU also said that zoos must make every effort not to let zoo birds and wild birds come in close contact.

With the news of a recent outbreak in the UK it is good that the EU has the regulations in place as a very rapid response was noted for the containement of this case, and the surveillance and danger zone were established very quickly.