New Zealand has suspended all poultry exports after the first case of bird flu was confirmed at an egg farm in the South Otago region.
Exports of poultry products worth about NZ$190 million ($112 million) a year will stop until New Zealand can reconfirm it is free of bird flu, Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard said in Wellington on Monday.
“For trade purposes we have to say to a number of countries that we don’t have highly pathogenic avian influenza,” Hoggard told Radio New Zealand. “Obviously we can’t say that anymore at this point. When we can do it again, then we will work on rebuilding that store.”
Biosecurity New Zealand has imposed strict movement controls at a commercial egg farm after testing confirmed the chickens were infected with bird flu, but said the strain was not a global concern.
Tests at a mainland free-range poultry farm identified a “highly pathogenic subtype of H7N6 avian influenza,” New Zealand Biosecurity deputy director-general Stuart Anderson said in a statement. “While the type of H5N1 circulating in wildlife around the world is not the cause of concern, we take this finding seriously.”
Concerns about bird flu have grown as the H5N1 virus strain has spread through American poultry and dairy farms. While most human bird flu infections continue to occur in farm workers who have been exposed to infected animals, health officials are watching for any signs of human spread.
Anderson said the strain found on the New Zealand farm “is unlikely to be transmitted to mammals”.
There have been no reports of sick or dead birds at other poultry farms, and there are no concerns for human health or food safety, he said.
Biosecurity New Zealand believes that laying hens foraging outside the shed were exposed to a low-pathogenic virus from wild waterfowl, which can mutate when interacting with chicks.
A 10 kilometer (six mile) buffer zone has been set up around the rural economy, as well as restrictions preventing the movement of animals, equipment and fodder. About 40,000 birds will be destroyed initially, Hoggard said.
