Decision to allow turkey imports defended despite flu outbreak

Britain: The British government has defended a decision to allow the import of turkey meat from Hungary after an outbreak of…

Britain:The British government has defended a decision to allow the import of turkey meat from Hungary after an outbreak of bird flu at an English farm that may be linked to an infection in the central European country.

The Sunday Timesreported that 20 tonnes of turkey meat were imported from Hungary last Tuesday.

This occurred three days after an outbreak of the H5N1 virus was confirmed at a farm in Suffolk, owned by Europe's biggest turkey producer.

Government inspectors knew the firm, Bernard Matthews, intended to import meat from a slaughterhouse 50km (31 miles) from the site of a Hungarian bird flu outbreak in January, but did not intervene, according to the report. The Hungarian meat was processed at a Suffolk plant just a few hundred yards from the sheds where 160,000 turkeys were culled after the bird flu virus was found.

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Environment secretary David Miliband said EU rules restricted movement of turkeys within a 30km radius of an avian flu outbreak, but Britain would have been inviting retaliation if it had imposed a ban on all poultry from Hungary.

Supermarkets in Britain are facing the possibility of a recall of turkey products after the government's chief scientist, Prof Sir David King, warned this might be necessary to stop the spread of the disease. A Department of Agriculture and Food spokesman here said it was monitoring the situation in Britain.

- (Additional reporting Reuters)