Bird flu again at company in Zeewolde, 21,000 ducks culled

Bird flu has been diagnosed in ducks at a poultry farm in Zeewolde. All 21,000 animals will be killed, the outgoing Minister of Agriculture Schouten announced.

The poultry farm was checked for infections because bird flu had also been diagnosed yesterday at a farm nearby. The company is located within a radius of three kilometers from the previously affected poultry farm. There was already a transport ban on poultry within a radius of ten kilometers around that company, which now remains in force.

Confinement obligation

The two poultry farms are not the only ones in Zeewolde that have been affected by bird flu. A week and a half ago, the disease established at an organic chicken farm in the municipality. At that time, 36,000 chickens had to be culled.

Since then, a confinement obligation has been imposed throughout the country for companies that keep commercial poultry. Birds that reside in zoos or petting zoos, for example, must be shielded as much as possible from wild birds, which can transmit bird flu through their droppings.

Schouten instituted the obligation to keep the cages because of the bird flu infection in Zeewolde, but also because more dead wild birds have been found recently in the north of the Netherlands and in Germany.

Besides in Zeewolde, bird flu outbreaks have now also been detected in the North Holland villages of Grootschermer and Assendelft and in Parrega in Friesland.

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