Newcastle disease outbreak reported at Sweden egg farm

Just over a week ago, Newcastle disease made an unwelcome return to Sweden after an absence of six months.

Marmit, Freeimages.com
Marmit, Freeimages.com

Just over a week ago, Newcastle disease made an unwelcome return to Sweden after an absence of six months.

In one of two layer houses at a farm in Kalmar County in the south of the country showed symptoms that included egg drop, shell-less eggs and a spike in mortality. According to the official report from the Swedish Board of Agriculture to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), all 4,000 hens have been humanely destroyed.

Protection and surveillance zones have been set up around the infected farm, and the usual movement restrictions are in place.

The source of the virus-avian paramyxovirus type 1 (APMV-1)-is unknown.

Sweden’s last outbreak of Newcastle disease was at an organic layer farm in Skane County in October 2016. The country declared itself to be free of Newcastle disease to the OIE in February of this year.

Earlier this month, Sweden declared to the OIE that the country was free of highly pathogenic avian influenza.

Although avian influenza is possibly the greatest threat to the global poultry industry, a recent article in Poultry International includes endemic Newcastle disease among the greatest challenges to bird health in the coming decades. This is despite the availability of vaccines, biosecurity measures and controls on the movement of poultry products as measures to control the disease.

Affecting birds including domestic poultry, Newcastle disease is a severe and highly contagious disease found worldwide and, according to an OIE factsheet. Symptoms include respiratory, nervous and digestive signs, as well as egg defects and variable mortality rates up to 100 percent. Transmission is usually through direct contact with an infected host, which may be a wild bird.

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