GREECE / ALBANIA: Chickens buried alive on Albania-Greece border as EU veterinarians visit suspect farm

Record ID: 565266

  • Title: GREECE / ALBANIA: Chickens buried alive on Albania-Greece border as EU veterinarians visit suspect farm
  • Date: 21st October 2005
  • Summary: VETS LEAVING FARM
  • Embargoed: 5th November 2005 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Health
  • Reuters ID: LVAEUESR5GT8J3MQ14P066TUW0CP
  • Story Text: A team of experts from the European Commission carried out inspections on a small poultry farm on the Greek island of Inousses on Thursday (October 20), where a turkey was found to have the bird flu virus.
    Greece is awaiting further lab results to find out if the bird was infected with the dangerous H5N1 strain.
    On Thursday, EU officials said initial tests had been negative but that more tests were needed to determine whether Greece had become the first EU country to be hit by the virus.
    The farm where the suspect bird was found has been decontaminated and eight other turkeys on the farm tested negative for the virus, government health officials said.
    Veterinarian Paul Vrouven, on the EU inspection team, gave few details of the visit.
    ''We do inspections like this in different countries, in several countries all over the world. We cannot comment on this because we must first report to our hierarchy, you can understand that. We make a report and then usually publish it on the internet. Our work here is to see what the authorities are doing with this suspicion. We are not here to take material. We just check what is being done by authorities,'' said Vrouven.
    At the Albanian border with Greece, a truckload of chickens from Greece were buried alive after being held at the border for five days in a dispute created by bird flu fears.
    A witness told Reuters the 3,600 birds were thrown into a deep pit and bulldozed over while they tried to fly away.
    The Agriculture Ministry had refused to admit the cargo despite protestations by the owner that the chickens were virus-free. Greece has confirmed a case of bird flu on an island off the Turkish coast but is still conducting tests to determine if it is the deadly strain of the virus.
    Albanian television said the birds were not disinfected before they were buried.
    The H5N1 strain first surfaced in Hong Kong in 1997, re-emerged in 2003 in South Korea and has spread through southeast Asia, which the World Health Organisation says is the most likely epicentre of any future human pandemic.
    Migrating birds have carried the virus into Europe, and Africa fears it will be next. European governments have been trying to avert panic and reassure consumers.
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