Hungarian head vet denies links to bird flu farm
160,000 turkeys from the farm were culled to prevent the infection spreading
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Monday, 12, Feb 2007 09:29
The deputy chief vet of Hungary has denied any link between the bird flu-infected farm in Suffolk and the outbreak of the disease in his country.
Dr Lajos Bognar claims there is no link between the strain of the H5N1 virus in the Bernard Matthews turkey farm and the outbreak of the strain in the eastern European country, despite the transfer of poultry between the two sites and UK vets pointing towards a connection.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Farming Today, Dr Bognar said: "There is no connection with the infected areas and the live animals which arrive from other places to that slaughter house also."
Despite Bernard Matthews' claim that its processing plant in Hungary is hundreds of miles from the exclusion zone, it has emerged that some meat did come from an abattoir in Kecskemet; 64 kilometres outside the ten-kilometre exclusion zone set up around the goose farm in Darekegyhaz where H5N1 was first reported.
"It's close but it is outside of the B zone which is the lowest zone...it is a slaughter house, not a farm, so we don't need to establish further biosecurity measures," Dr Bognar added.
However the deputy chief vet in the UK, Fred Landeg, said: "Our investigations have shown that one possible route of infection is poultry product imported from Hungary."