Avian influenza’s rampant spread through Europe’s poultry flocks has begun to ease, but cases may rebound again as wild birds migrate in spring, the European Food Safety Authority said Monday.
(Bloomberg) — Avian influenza’s rampant spread through Europe’s poultry flocks has begun to ease, but cases may rebound again as wild birds migrate in spring, the European Food Safety Authority said Monday.
The number of weekly outbreaks from Dec. 3 to March 1 fell from a peak in November, it said in a joint report with the European Centre for Disease Prevention & Control and the European Union Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza. Combined with wild birds, detections in January were about a third lower than the same month last year.
That could offer some relief to consumer egg and meat prices that spiraled higher throughout the past year, as farms were badly hit by the virus and producers faced high feed and energy costs. Still, the agencies warned that the spread could soon accelerate.
Detections in gulls posted an unexpected increase during the period, especially in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, according to the report. That could heighten the infection risk for poultry — which often catch the disease from wild birds — as breeding colonies spread inland in the coming months and overlap with farming areas.
The agencies said the risk to the general public remains low. Recent cases in mammals, such as red foxes in France, have mainly occurred in animals that hunt or feed on wild birds.
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