EU approves new bird flu measures

The European Union has approved new measures to try to halt the spread of bird flu across the continent.

Health officials from European countries agreed the steps at a two-day meeting in Brussels.

EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said that all necessary measures were being taken and the public should not be "unduly alarmed".

This comes as Slovenia confirmed a swan found in the north of the country had the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.

In the last week, H5N1 has also been confirmed in wild swans in Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece and Italy. Hungary is currently testing dead swans for the virus.


Steps approved at the meeting included the automatic creation of 3km (two-mile) protection zones and 10 km surveillance zones around outbreaks in wild birds.

If the virus were to transfer from wild birds to poultry, "buffer zones" that could cover an entire region would be established and the transport of poultry restricted within them.

"The establishment of these risk areas will help to define a disaster-free part of the country, which is obviously good for trade purposes," Philip Tod, a European Commission food safety spokesman, said.


The measures are expected to come into force in the next few days.

The BBC's Jonny Dymond says when bird flu first came to Europe, the possibility of transmission to humans was the key concern.

But now he says the prospect most worrying officials is that of the virus taking hold in Europe's poultry population.

A number of European countries, including Germany, Sweden and Denmark, have ordered poultry to be kept indoors to avoid contamination.

In other developments:

# Slovenia has confirmed H5N1 in a swan found dead in the north of the country.

# Greece has found two more swans with H5N1 in the north of the country.

# Austria found a third infected swan near the southern city of Graz.

# Tests are being carried out on three Hungarian swans to see if H5N1 is present.

The H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus has killed at least 90 people around the world, mainly in Southeast Asia, since it emerged in 2003.

It can infect humans in close contact with infected birds, but there is no evidence that it can be passed from human to human.