About 16,000 turkeys culled after bird flu found on German farm

HAMBURG (Reuters) – About 16,000 turkeys have been culled after bird flu of the high risk H5N8 strain was found on another German farm, authorities said on Wednesday.

The case was discovered on a farm in the Kleve area in the central German state of North Rhine Westfalia, the Kleve local government authority said.

Around 77,000 turkeys, chickens and ducks were also culled this week after the contagious H5N8 strain was found on four farms in a major poultry-producing region in the north German state of Lower Saxony.

The contagious H5N8 strain has been found in over 500 wild birds in Germany in recent weeks. Outbreaks on farms have been relatively rare after the government introduced tough sanitary rules to prevent infection by wild birds including orders to keep poultry indoors in high-risk regions.

A series of European countries and Israel have found cases of H5N8 bird flu in the past few weeks and some ordered poultry flocks be kept indoors to prevent the disease spreading. France has widened high risk restrictions to the entire country after several cases of the H5N8 strain were detected.

(Reporting by Michael Hogan; Editing by Adrian Croft)