Bird flu spreading fast among EU poultry

Bird flu has been spreading fast among poultry in the European Union this season, raising concerns of a repeat of previous crises that led to the deaths of tens of millions of poultry in the bloc and fears that it could spread to humans.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has killed hundreds of millions birds around the globe in recent years.

Its spread to humans and other mammal species, including U.S. dairy cattle and swine, is raising concerns that the virus could mutate into one easily transmissible between humans and spark a pandemic.

Between the start of the migratory season on Aug. 1 and the end of last week, EU countries had reported a total of 62 outbreaks of bird flu on poultry farms, mostly in the eastern part of the bloc, World Organisation for Animal Health data showed.

That compares to seven bird flu outbreaks reported on EU farms by the same stage in 2023, but was still well below the 112 outbreaks reported by late October 2022.

However, bird flu has not been detected in humans or in cattle in the EU, unlike the U.S. where the virus has spread to nearly 400 dairy herds in 14 states this year, and been detected in 36 people since April.

Four of them had been working at a commercial egg farm infected by the virus.

Bird flu is a seasonal disease among poultry, spread mostly through faeces of infected wild birds and transport of infected material. It typically appears in the autumn with migratory birds and decreases in the spring.

Like last season, Hungary recorded by far the largest number of outbreaks since the start of the season on Aug. 1, with the number rising fast in the past weeks, the data showed.

In Poland, the EU's largest poultry producer, the virus led to the culling of 1.8 million birds, of which nearly 1.4 million were on just one farm in the town of Sroda Wielkopolska.

France, which had suffered the most severe losses in 2022/23 but had been mostly spared last season, reinforced biosecurity measures around poultry farms in mid-October, citing a rise in the number of bird flu cases in several neighbouring countries.