Britons strive to contain bird flu

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From combined dispatches

HOLTON, England -- Britain scrambled to contain its first outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu in domestic poultry yesterday after the virus was found at a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey producer.

About 2,500 turkeys have died since Thursday at the Bernard Matthews farm near Lowestoft in eastern England. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said all 159,000 turkeys on the farm would be culled.

"We're in new territory," National Farmers' Union Poultry Board Chairman Charles Bourns said. "We've every confidence in DEFRA, but until we know how this disease arrived, this is a very apprehensive time for all poultry farmers."

The virus strain was identified as the highly pathogenic Asian strain, similar to a virus found in Hungary in January, DEFRA said.

It was the first time the deadly H5N1 strain was found on a British farm.

The outbreak mirrored a similar case in which hundreds of turkeys died at a farm in eastern France almost a year ago.

That outbreak was contained and there followed a lull in cases of H5N1 in European poultry until last month, when thousands of birds were culled after an outbreak among geese on a farm in Hungary.

Also yesterday, the World Heath Organization confirmed Nigeria's first human death from the strain. Nigerian health officials on Wednesday said several people had apparently contracted the virus, including a young woman who later died.

The strain tends to be transmitted to poultry by infected migrating wildfowl.