Dutch Lock Up Free-range Chickens to Halt Bird Flu

More than 5m free-range chickens were shut indoors yesterday as the Dutch government imposed the most stringent measures in the EU to try to prevent the spread of bird flu.

As European veterinary officials prepared to discuss the outbreak of the disease in Siberia at a meeting on Thursday, Dutch farmers started complying with an order to move about 5.5 million free-range chickens to temporary shelters. Around 80 million battery birds in the Netherlands are already kept inside.

The Dutch agriculture ministry, which ordered the destruction of 30 million chickens during a bird flu outbreak in 2003, acted amid fears that migrating wild birds were carrying a strain of the disease west from Russia.

The disease is not believed so far to have crossed the Urals, which mark the boundary between Asian and European Russia.

A senior Russian official said yesterday that the disease had not been confirmed in the southern region of Kalmykia, which is situated in European Russia, after an investigation by inspectors into the deaths of birds in the region last week.

But Yevgeny Nepoklonov, the deputy head of the Russian agricultural ministry's veterinary and phytosanitary control service, warned that migrating birds could carry the disease to western Europe and the US next spring.

"Today, this isn't a problem of a single state, it is a problem of all mankind that must be studied together and that needs consolidated and well-coordinated activity," he told a news conference as he called on the World Bank to finance measures to stop wild birds spreading the virus.

The European commission stressed yesterday that there was no need for panic in western Europe because no birds in the Netherlands had been infected. Germany, however, may follow the Dutch lead and impose similar restrictions on the movements of birds next month.

Britain yesterday ruled out following the Dutch example, but said it would monitor developments. Ben Bradshaw, the animal welfare minister, said the risk had "increased a little bit" but insisted that it was still low.

"We monitor the situation daily but so far there haven't been any confirmed outbreaks west of the Urals," Mr Bradshaw told Radio 4's The World at One.

In common with most of the EU's 25 member states, Mr Bradshaw will despatch a senior veterinary official to a meeting in Brussels on Thursday to discuss the latest outbreak.

No decisions are expected to be made at the informal meeting, where the Dutch representative will outline in detail the measures introduced yesterday.

Confining fowl indoors can hit farmers' income because chickens can lose their free-range status. Distributors and grocery stores in the Netherlands have agreed to continue labelling eggs from the 5.5 million chickens as free range.

However, Britain's National Farmers' Union warned yesterday that egg producers could lose free range status if similar measures were introduced.

Charles Bourns, the farmer's union poultry board chairman, said: "As [bird flu] creeps across Russia and into Europe, it gets more significant. Certainly the financial implications for a farmer whose birds get it are colossal. Farmers would actually be ruined."

While European commission officials attempted to calm the atmosphere yesterday, the strong measures taken by the Dutch authorities highlight fears that western Europe could be susceptible.

The bird flu heading westwards is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain which has killed at least 57 people across south-east Asia since 2003.