Changes in bird migration patterns are reinforcing seasonal outbreaks of avian flu, with more species affected and risks for poultry farms growing.
Avian influenza is a highly contagious disease that causes high mortality rates in both wild and domestic bird populations.
Faced with a growing number of outbreaks of the disease in recent weeks, several European countries, including Belgium and France, have tightened their biosecurity measures, banning poultry from coming into contact with wild birds and implementing stricter rules during transport. In Germany and Spain, millions of birds have been culled.
With avian flu present in Europe for 20 years, countries regularly observe an increase in cases in the autumn due to the annual bird migration. The current increase is “typical for the season,” said a spokesperson at the EU food safety watchdog (EFSA), which monitors the situation through its bird flu radar.
But this time, more species are affected.
“The large-scale mortality in common cranes” observed this autumn is “a special event,” the agency said. In Brandenburg, in Eastern Germany, over a thousand cranes were found dead infected with the virus in just a few days, Die Zeit reported.
The German Agriculture Minister, Alois Rainer, brought the matter to the attention of his European counterparts at a Council meeting on Monday.
Unlike in previous years, Germany observed a “shift with regard to the species affected” by the avian flu, Rainer confirmed.
Due to “a change in flight times or migration routes,” cranes, which “previously had no exposure to the avian influenza virus,” got in close contact with other infected migratory birds, he added.
This phenomenon “increases the risk” of introducing the virus into Europe during winter migration, an EFSA’s spokesperson explained.
The crisis is already having an economic impact, Spanish Agriculture Minister Luis Planas warned during the Council meeting. The culling of “more than 2.3 million laying hens” in Spain has had “serious economic consequences, including repercussions for the distribution of eggs for human consumption,” he said.
But the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) called for avoiding alarmism.
“It is too early in the avian flu season to judge whether this rise is abnormal,” an organisation spokesman told Euractiv.
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