# 424
Well, you just had to know with the British press all over this story, something was going to break. If the Observer has it right, they may have have (and `may' is the operative word here) uncovered a link between the Hungarian outbreaks of the H5N1 virus and the outbreak in Suffolk.
7.30pm update
Turkey carcasses from Hungary linked to UK bird flu outbreak
Observer exclusive: UK poultry contamination blamed on carcasses from Matthews' Hungarian factory. By Jo Revill, Health Editor
Thursday February 8, 2007
Observer.co.uk
A processing plant in Staffordshire where culled poultry were taken for incineration.
Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA
A consignment of dead turkeys from the Bernard Matthews' plant in Hungary, where there have been recent outbreaks of bird flu, could be the source of the disease's outbreak in Britain last week, The Observer can reveal.
The firm's Suffolk plant now lies at the centre of a major investigation by government officials who no longer believe that Britain's first outbreak of bird flu was spread by wild birds.
The government, which has known about the contaminated meat since Monday, put out a statement tonight in response to The Observer story.
The Observer can reveal that a consignment of turkeys, which had been partly processed, travelled by lorry from the Hungarian plant and arrived in the UK a few days before January 27, the date when farm workers began to notice the first signs of illness in the turkey chicks at the farm near Holton, Suffolk.
A Whitehall source said there were concerns about bio-security at the processing plant, which lies adjacent to the Holton farm, where the infected birds were found. Officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are looking at allegations that scraps of meat are sometimes left lying around the floor of the plant and are scavenged by rats and wild birds, creating a possible route for infection.
There is much more to this exclusive report in the Observer reportage, and I won't spoil it by revealing all the details. It has all the right elements, including the suggestion of some sort of coverup of what actually went on.
Suffice to say, if true, this story is going to be big news for days to come.
As they say, this story is `developing'.
