Second bird flu case in Netherlands

Dutch officials on Thursday confirmed the detection of another case of bird flu at a chicken farm, the second time this week that the disease has been found in the Netherlands.

The Dutch food and safety watchdog NVWA said the latest outbreak was detected at a farm in the village of Ter Aar in South Holland, 25 kilometers (15 miles) from a farm where an infection was found last week. All the 43,000 chickens at the farm were being destroyed and the farm disinfected, the NVWA said.

Officials say tests are being conducted to establish what strain of bird flu is involved. The earlier case in the Netherlands was confirmed as H5N8, which is considered as posing a low health risk to humans, but is highly contagious among poultry.

Several European outbreaks

The outbreak has led authorities to impose the second ban this week on the transport of all poultry and products within the country. The ban could last up to 72 hours.

The bird flu cases in the Netherlands follow outbreaks of similar strains of the virus in Britain and Germany.

The H5N1 strain of the disease, which can be passed more easily to humans, has killed more than 400 people, mainly in southeast Asia, since first appearing in 2003. Another strain of bird flu, H7N9, emerged in 2013, and has since caused the deaths of more than 170 people,

The Netherlands has a huge poultry industry, with some 95 million chickens and egg exports that totalled some 10.6 billion euros ($13.2 billion) in 2011, according to the latest Dutch statistics.

tj/se (AFP, AP)