Following the outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Europe, the European Union’s trading partners including Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, The Philippines, Turkey and Ukraine have now lifted, or partially lifted, their restrictions on poultry from affected member states, reports the U.K. National Farmers Union (NFU).
The European Union has welcomed the lifting of the measures, but notes that country-wide bans should never have been imposed in the first place.
In response the outbreaks, European authorities had immediately rolled out stringent regionalization measures for the affected areas. These had the effect of guaranteeing safe exports from those areas that remained free of the disease.
UK poultry sector supports early detection
Separately, the NFU has called for the UK government to continue the year long pilot scheme Testing for Exclusion of Avian Influenza.
The pilot, launched in May 2014, gave the UK’s poultry industry a way of ruling out notifiable disease promptly, and allowing the early detection of disease when birds were not displaying clinical symptoms.
The NFU notes that the sector benefited from early detection in the case of the low pathogenic avian influenza detected in broiler breeders in February this year.
