Bird flu hits hard Israel
The poultry industry in Israel has been hit hard by bird flu outbreaks reported in the last few days. Birds on a farm with 42,000 turkeys were culled at the end of the week after being infected with the virus and the next day two other farms counting more than 21,000 birds have been hit by the disease. The veterinary services are operating in an emergency format and continuing to actively locate outbreaks in northern Israel and isolate the hotspots. Eggs produced in the region of Gadish are being kept out of the market. "This is an infection event of a magnitude we have not experienced here before," said Agriculture Minister Oded Forer, quoted by the Jerusalem Post newspaper.
Forer recently instructed his office to raise the egg quotas for farmers in Israel and to open the market for imports due to expectations of an egg shortage in the coming months. The minister is operating an inter-ministerial command room to handle the continuing bird flu outbreak in the country. A high number of bird flu outbreaks have been reported throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia in recent weeks, mostly due to the H5N1 subtype, according to the World Organization for Animal Health.
The OIE has urged countries to increase surveillance for high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks, as the virus has been reported in over 40 countries since July.
The H5N1, H5N3, H5N4, H5N5, H5N6 and H5N8 subtypes of HPAI are circulating in bird and poultry populations across the globe, sparking concern at OIE which called this an “unprecedented genetic variability of subtypes... creating an epidemiologically challenging landscape.”
According to researchers from Germany’s Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, Europe is experiencing its "strongest avian flu epidemic ever".
The institute added that “there is no end in sight” as the virus spreads throughout the continent and around the world, with new cases reported on a daily basis.
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