Bird flu

The sight of dead birds around water at Center Parcs and Attenborough Nature Reserve in Nottinghamshire became depressingly familiar during 2022.

Nothing less than a holocaust hit the roseate tern population on Coquette Island of the Northumberland coast. Geese died in their thousands.

The original source of the epidemic was intensive farming in the Near East.

From Monday all captive birds must be kept securely indoors.

This government source clearly demonstrates that game birds including pheasants are suffering from avian flu: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1106041/HPAI_Europe_33_21_September_2022.pdf

The political leadership of the UK government appears to have done nothing.

No measures appear to have been taken to work with foreign governments to improve poultry husbandry or welfare.

No steps have been taken to place a moratorium on the release of fifty million pheasants into the countryside.

So, my sisters hens are kept within their pen to prevent infection of wild birds while pheasants wander by on the other side of their enclosure. What??

There is now evidence that avian flu has crossed over into the mammal population. A senior NHS manager I was talking to recently talked about their concern of the disease onward transmission to humans in a further flu epidemic.

My exasperated letter to Mark Spencer MP.