Higher farmer compensation in battle on bird flu

EU farm ministers agreed to increase compensation payments to poultry owners for costs incurred in fighting against bird flu and focus on lower-risk strains to stop the virus spreading, officials said.

The EU funding will be used to compensate farmers who have to slaughter poultry or other captive birds due to a risk of the disease, destroy contaminated feedstuffs and animal products, or have to disinfect plants and equipment.

Starting in January, the EU will pay half the bill presented by farmers who are battling against both high and low pathogenic strains of bird flu in their poultry flocks. The ministers' agreement was a slap in the face for the European Commission, the EU's executive arm that administers such payments, which wanted to pay around a third of the bill in cases of low pathogenic strains, and half for high-risk cases.

EU governments paid out more than €100 million in compensation to farmers in Europe's last two major epidemics, mainly for slaughter measures, cleansing and disinfection.

The overall costs, however, can be much higher. In the Netherlands, which saw a devastating bird flu outbreak in 2003 that wiped out over a third of the flock, the total losses - including from export bans - reached around 500 million. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses originate from a mutation of certain low pathogenic (LPAI) viruses - the H5 and H7 types that cause very high death rates in poultry and are blamed for the vast majority of bird flu cases in humans.

While domestic poultry flocks tend to be free of bird flu, certain wild birds - especially migratory waterfowl like ducks and geese - can be a permanent 'reservoir' of low-grade viruses that sometimes spread to domestic poultry, officials say.

The ministers also agreed to update the EU's existing bird flu law to increase controls on LPAI strains so as to prevent any mutation into higher-risk forms of the disease. "The new measures will be managed so that restrictions on the trade in poultry and poultry products from the vaccinated areas can be minimised," the Commission said in a statement.