Norfolk poultry boss calls for mass vaccinations amid rise in cases of bird flu
The owner of a major poultry firm is calling for urgent vaccinations to get on top of the rising number of bird flu outbreaks.
Eight cases have now been identified in Norfolk, with a total of 11 recorded nationally by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The call for more support has come from Traditional Norfolk Poultry, which produces free-range and organic chickens and turkeys, and has seen a case at its site at East Harling.
In a previous outbreak in 2022, the company lost 300,000 birds - which could have generated millions of pounds in revenue - and caused "complete devastation", said owner Mark Gorton.
Some 25,000 birds will have to be culled in the latest case.
"All of a sudden it has hit us," said owner Mark Gorton. "It's very worrying times now. Historically, there's been other diseases in poultry that have caused the same devastation that now we vaccinate for and we [no longer] hear from them.
"Bird flu [or] avian influenza is another one of these. We must get some sort of vaccination sorted out to stop this disease so that we can carry on as an industry and go forward.
"I think if there is anything good to say about this... [it's that] all of our seasonal Christmas turkeys are now done, finished and the birds will hit the shelves on Friday and Saturday."
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed that the H5N1 strain of avian influenza was found on a second poultry farm near Attleborough and a third premises near Watton in Norfolk.
A 3km protection zone and a 10km surveillance zone have been declared around both sites and all poultry on the premises would be humanely culled, the department said.
On Friday Defra announced that Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire and parts of Yorkshire would be made subject to avian flu restrictions.
Farmers have previously criticised the government for a lack of adequate insurance and compensation, but the UK's chief veterinary officer Christine Middlemiss told ITV News Anglia that support was available.
"We pay compensation for the value of the birds, [the] healthy birds that we cull," she said.
"Government also pays and undertakes the preliminary cleansing and disinfection which is really important to get rid of the virus in the first stage.
"[We are] really working very closely with industry [and] we understand the financial impact of disease and that's one of the reasons the compensation is there."
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