WARSAW: Bird flu has hit just 75km from Poland’s northwestern border at a poultry farm in Germany’s Greifswald region, website onet.pl reported. Suspicions of bird flu were raised when 31 birds were found dead at a German poulty farm. A further 26 fowl were immediately culled as precaution, with tests later confirming the H5N8 strain of the virus had been present, onet.pl said.
The highly contagious virus has not previously affected domestic fowl in Europe, the website said. However, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health, the disease has spread throughout Germany, Austria, Croatia and Switzerland in the past few days, killing wild birds including ducks. Poland was Europe’s top poulty meat producing country in 2014, according to the EU’s statistical office, Eurostat.
