Bird flu outbreak at quarantined Victorian egg farm appears to be contained

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A Victorian egg farm has euthanised thousands of chickens and is now in quarantine after a strain of bird flu was detected. Dr Joanne Sillince from the Australian Chicken Growers' Council says the outbreak appears to be contained.

Transcript

00:00 Both the egg and the meat industries have been on high alert for a long time because

00:06 of the naughty one in Antarctica.

00:08 So if you like, this is a big and very reasonable test of our defences.

00:14 Look, I have to say, the farmer did the right thing.

00:17 I mean, the birds got flu and if anybody's ever had the flu, you know what that feels

00:21 like.

00:22 And so he called in the vets very quickly.

00:25 The state government jumped in very quickly.

00:28 The federal government did the testing very quickly.

00:31 They're moving to isolate that farm and manage the situation very quickly.

00:37 I have every hope that this one's going to be controlled very quickly.

00:42 And so while it's genuinely a disaster for the farmer, and it's absolutely not a disaster

00:47 for food because this virus has nothing to do with food.

00:51 It has to do with sick birds, but the eggs and the meat are just fine.

00:54 Some strains do more damage than others.

00:58 This strain on the Victorian farm, the H7N3, has definitely made birds sick.

01:03 And as an industry, a long time ago, we decided we didn't want sick birds from influenza.

01:09 And that's why there's the quarantine and the stamping out.

01:13 But the one in Antarctica is a bit naughty in as much as it seems to be moving between

01:19 some species.

01:20 And that's the reason we don't want it in Australia.

01:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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