Expert says no bird flu in British poultry

Despite the discovery of a dead swan infected with bird flu in Scotland panic has abated over the possibility of a widespread outbreak of bird flu in the UK.

The testing of more than 1,100 birds since the end of February has revealed no further cases.

According to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs there are currently no reported cases of suspected of bird flu prioritised for testing and the swan remains the only confirmed case of the deadly H5N1 strain.

The swan was found washed up in the harbour of the coastal town Cellardyke, in Fife, in Scotland, but the Government's senior scientific adviser Sir David King is emphatic that bird flu is not present among poultry in Britain.

King says he is optimistic about its absence in the wild bird population and says to date only one dead bird has been washed ashore with H5N1 and this may have come from an area of Europe that had previously been infected.

King says more evidence of spread of the virus must be seen before it can be said that it has arrived in the UK.

The bird was found in an advanced state of decay, minus its head making identification difficult but experts at the Central Science Laboratory in York are continuing to conduct DNA tests on it.

By establishing the species epidemiologists will be able to determine if it was migratory and where it came from.

Experts are reluctant to speculate on how the swan may have picked up the disease until that information is available.

Meanwhile tests conducted on a farm in southern Austria, after 500 chicken died over a short period, have proved negative to the bird flu virus.

The samples were tested by the government agency for health and food safety, AGES, and the ministry says that it will carry out further tests to find the reasons for the deaths.

To date Austria has had many cases of bird flu in wild birds, and one case in domestic poultry in an animal sanctuary, but no commercial flocks have been affected.

Last week Germany reported a case of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus in commercial poultry.