# 470
Concerns that the H5N1 virus may have been spread far and wide across the British countryside continue as new revelations regarding the disposal and processing of meat at the Suffolk farm are revealed.
This from the Sunday Telegraph.
Fears grow that gulls will spread flu far and wide
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Sunday TelegraphLast Updated: 12:25am GMT 18/02/2007
Health officials are urgently investigating fears that the disposal of contaminated waste from the Bernard Matthews plant at the centre of the bird flu outbreak may have allowed the virus to spread to other parts of the country.
Experts fear that meat and packaging contaminated with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus from the Bernard Matthews processing plant at Holton, Suffolk, may have found its way on to landfill sites, where wild birds might become infected. Meat carrying the virus could also have been used to make pet food, increasing the risk of the disease's spread.
Further down the story, it is reported that defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs):
It has also stepped up surveillance of gulls and other wild birds at local landfill sites. Bird experts have visited a site less than six miles from the Holton plant to examine the bird population there, although no signs of bird flu infection have so far been found.
Whichs sounds reassuring. Until you get this article, which appears in the Independant, which says no wild birds have been tested in Britain since the Suffolk outbreak began.
Defra investigators fails to test live wild birds for flu despite risk of infection
Gulls feeding on waste meat at infected farm could spread H5N1 to other poultry farms, officials admit
By Geoffrey Lean
Published: 18 February 2007
Bird flu investigators have failed to perform tests to see if gulls and other wild birds are spreading the deadly H5N1 virus from the stricken Bernard Matthews farm in Suffolk, although they accept that it is a threat.
Officials admitted late last week that they have not tested a live wild bird in Britain since the outbreak began three weeks ago. This appears to contradict repeated assurances from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) that "wild bird surveillance" in the area has been "enhanced".
Opposition environment spokesmen yesterday described the revelation as "staggering" and astonishing, and undertook immediately to raise it with David Miliband, the Secretary of State for the Environment.
Defra investigators published an official report on Friday, showing that gulls specifically flocked to the Bernard Matthews site to gorge themselves on waste trimmings of meat in open-topped bins outside the processing plant, as revealed by this newspaper last Sunday.
The report said they were "clearly attracted to the site" by the bins and added that they were "observed feeding on these trimmings and taking them away from the processing plant and into the area containing the finishing units" where live turkeys are raised. It suggests that this is one of the ways in which H5N1 could have infected the poultry.
Two different accounts of the same story. I guess we get to flip a coin.
I suppose, the first article, where it states they are `stepping up surveillence', could be taken as `we haven't started, but we will . . .soon', but that certainly isn't the way it is portrayed. And I suppose, if no birds have been tested, it isn't an untruth to say no infections have been detected so far.
So maybe they aren't so divergent, after all.
You just have to read them very carefully.
