Dutch cull 215,000 chickens after bird flu detected

Dutch health workers have culled some 215,000 chickens after an outbreak of a highly-contagious strain of bird flu was detected on a farm in the country's southeast, agricultural authorities said Thursday.

"Bird flu was detected at a poultry farm specialising in battery hens," at Puiflijk, about 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) northwest of the Dutch city of Nijmegen, the Agriculture Ministry said.

"It is most likely a highly contagious pathogen of the H5 variety," it added in a statement.

Around 100,000 hens were culled at the farm as well as 115,000 other chickens on a nearby farm.

Authorities have thrown a one-kilometre cordon around the farms and imposed a 10-kilometre ban on the transport of poultry products including meat, eggs and manure.

In late October health workers culled 35,700 birds on a third farm near Puiflijk after bird flu was detected there.

Dutch Agriculture Minister Carola Schouten on October 23 imposed preventative indoor containment on all commercial poultry farms after two dead swans were discovered carrying the highly contagious H5N8 variety of bird flu.

The new measures come as the Netherlands also battle a second wave of COVID-19 which continued to infect around 7,600 people a day.

© 2020 AFP