Bird Flu Found In Wales

The health authorities have placed a 1km restricted access zone around the farm.

A bird flu alert has been reported in a tiny farm in the north of Wales. It appears that a number of chickens died mysteriously and following testing it has been confirmed that a bird flu virus was the cause. The good news however is that the virus was not the H5N1 bird flu strain but another low risk version called H7N2.

What this means is that the type of bird flu that these chickens contracted was not the type that has been seen to jump over to humans in rare cases. Nevertheless the authorities are being doubly safe and have checked the man and woman who live on the small farm in case they were carrying the virus. They are still waiting for the test results.

The health authorities have placed a 1 kilometre restricted access zone around the farm in line with proper procedures and it is hoped that the virus will not spread to other farms. The head of the Welsh veterinary service said that the top priority was to locate the initial source of the virus and investigations were underway. The small farm is located at Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr which is near the town of Cerrigydrudion. 

Apparently the fifteen chickens had been bought two weeks ago and were of the Rhode Island Red variety.  All of the chickens have died and another 30 birds that lived on the farm were killed by vets wearing special protective apparatus.

This particular case of bird flu is the first one to occur in Wales and the authorities are determined to stamp it out immediately. This year only one case of a bird flu outbreak has occurred in the United Kingdom and that was on a farm in Suffolk which reared Bernard Matthews turkeys. As a result over 160,000 birds had to be slaughtered.