New Zealand has halted all poultry exports after confirming its first case of hen flu on an egg farm within the southern area of Otago.
Exports of poultry merchandise value about NZ$190 million ($112 million) a yr will stop till New Zealand can as soon as once more attest to being freed from hen flu, Meals Security Minister Andrew Hoggard mentioned Monday in Wellington.
“For trade purposes we have to say for a number of countries that we are free of high pathogen avian influenza,” Hoggard instructed Radio New Zealand. “We can obviously no longer say that at the moment. Once we are able to say that again then we’ll be working to restore that trade.”
Biosecurity New Zealand has positioned strict motion controls on the industrial egg farm after testing confirmed its chickens are contaminated with hen flu, however mentioned it’s not the pressure inflicting concern globally.
Assessments on the Mainland Poultry free-range farm recognized “a high pathogenic H7N6 subtype of avian influenza,” Biosecurity New Zealand deputy director-general Stuart Anderson mentioned in an announcement. “While it is not the H5N1 type circulating among wildlife around the world that has caused concern, we are taking the find seriously.”
Considerations about hen flu have risen because the H5N1 pressure of the virus has unfold all through US poultry and dairy farms. Whereas most human infections of hen flu proceed to be in farm employees uncovered to contaminated animals, well being officers are on the look ahead to any indications of unfold amongst people.
Anderson mentioned the pressure discovered on the New Zealand farm “is unlikely to be transmitted to mammals.”
There have been no experiences of sick or lifeless birds on different poultry farms, and there are not any human well being or meals security considerations, he mentioned.
Biosecurity New Zealand believes laying hens foraging exterior the shed have been uncovered to a low pathogenic virus from wild waterfowl, which might mutate on interplay with chickens.
A ten-kilometer (six-mile) buffer zone has been positioned across the rural farm in addition to restrictions stopping motion of animals, tools and feed. About 40,000 birds will initially be culled, Hoggard mentioned.
