Bird flu spreads its wing

The European Union on Wednesday assessed fears that bird flu was spreading further into Europe after suspicions emerged that the disease had reached Macedonia.

Samples from Macedonia were to be sent to a special EU lab in England for testing after said authorities started to cull 10,000 chickens in a small southern village as a precaution against bird flu.

"They are carrying out tests but cannot establish whether it's avian influenza at this time," said EU spokesman Philip Tod. Slobodan Cokrevski, director of Macedonia's State Veterinarian Administration, said the suspect sample would probably to be sent to Britain for further analysis only on Thursday, "because the shipment requires additional security" Cases have been reported in Romania and Greece.

Russia fears it could also have spread to the European side of the Urals. Amid increasing public concern the bird flu could mutate into a form that could cause a pandemic, health officials said they will also hold an exercise simulating a flu pandemic by the end of the year to improve readiness. A smaller preparedness exercise was also held on Wednesday to test emergency communication channels.

Tod also said the EU's executive arm would send experts to Greece to help identify the strain of bird flu detected there. Authorities began disinfecting a farm on a remote Aegean Sea island where a lone turkey was found to be infected with a strain of the disease. At the same time, the 25-nation European Union is preparing to extend a ban on imports of pet birds and feathers from Siberia because of the outbreak of bird flu there.

Besides the worries over eastern Siberia, hundreds of birds have died in a region south of Moscow, Russian media reported on Wednesday, raising fears of a new outbreak of bird flu in Russia. If confirmed as bird flu, the discovery in the Tula region, about 200 kilometers south of Moscow, would mark the first time that the deadly virus has appeared west of the Ural Mountains, which marks the divide between the European and Asian parts of Russia.

Tod said the European Commission had received no information about Tula from Russia. "The commission is contacting Russian authorities to establish the facts," he said.