# 1266
Six days after we received the first announcement comes word that the culling operations in Norfolk an Suffolk have been completed. Thus far, the feared spread of the virus to adjacent farms has not been detected.
Unknown still, however, is the source of this infection.
With four outbreaks this year in the UK, dozens more in Europe, and more feared with cold weather settling in, determining how the virus is contaminating farms and moving about is of prime importance.
Over the past year H5N1 has quietly slipped around western Europe, peeking up through cracks in the bio-security of farms in Germany, France, the UK, and the Czech Republic, but never bursting out in a widespread outbreak.
The fear is the virus is quietly becoming endemic in Western Europe, much as it has in South East Asia, and parts of the Middle East.
Not only would this be an ongoing disaster for already beleaguered farmers, but it would provide the virus more opportunities to mutate and possibly learn new tricks.
NICK HEATH
18 November 2007 11:28The cull of nearly 29,000 poultry in Norfolk and Suffolk to prevent the spread of highly contagious bird flu has been completed, Defra confirmed this morning.
The slaughter of the 28,600 birds was completed after the cull finished at two Norfolk farms that had had “dangerous contact” with the site of the original H5N1 outbreak at Park Farm in Redgrave, near Diss.
Tests for the virus on birds from the farms at Bridge Farm in Pulham, near Diss, and Stone House Farm in West Harling, near Thetford, and those culled last week at Hill Meadow Farm, Knettishall, near Thetford, are continuing.
A total of 5,500 free-range turkeys were slaughtered at Grove Farm in Botesdale in Suffolk on Friday after 50 birds were found dead but they later tested negative for the disease.
The lack of any new outbreaks of the disease so far is good news for the poultry industry as Defra officials have said that they would have expected to have found further evidence of the virus if it had spread.
There is also a ban on shooting within 500m of building occupied by commercial free-range poultry within the 3km protection and 10km surveillance zones.
Norfolk County Council trading standards team has been delivering information packs to 70 registered poultry keepers inside the 10km surveillance zone.
