DEFRA’s failure to find source of Bird Flu Outbreak in Suffolk will not fill Poultry Farmers with Confidence says Nicholson
Ulster Unionist MEP Jim Nicholson has said poultry farmers in Northern Ireland and across the UK will not be filled with confidence after the Department for food and rural affairs (DEFRA) in London announced yesterday that they have failed to establish the cause of the outbreak of bird flu in Suffolk this February.
In DEFRA’s final epidemiology report into the outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in Suffolk, the Government have concluded that there is ‘insufficent evidence’ to explain what the cause was.
In a statement Mr Nicholson said,
“The Government’s failure to establish what caused the outbreak of bird flu in Suffolk will not fill our poultry farmers with much confidence and raises serious questions about how satisfactory the Government’s regulations are for dealing with imports of poultry meat.
“The public will be surprised at such a conclusion given the serious breach of bio – security there was at the Bernard Mathews plant. It seems that the Bernard Mathews will be the major winner in all of this as DEFRA are being very generous in the compensation they are paying under existing regulations. DEFRA’s generosity is all the more surprising given how tight fisted they can be when it comes to compensating or paying the ordinary farmer.”