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Decision on bird flu vaccination programmes delayed
EU veterinary experts have delayed a decision on whether to approve anti-bird flu vaccination programmes in France and the Netherlands until tomorrow.Members of the standing committee for the food chain and animal health spent the day discussing the implications of allowing country-specific vaccinations as part of efforts to curb the spread of the disease.
France and the Netherlands had asked to be allowed to vaccinate their poultry stocks, but the move was resisted by other EU states - including Britain - on the grounds that it could mask flu symptoms and reduce the market value of the birds.
"Any vaccination agreed for France or for the Netherlands would apply to those countries only," an EU official said. "The decisions will be based on the particular situations regarding poultry and the containment of bird flu in those countries.
"Any other country in the EU wishing later to adopt a vaccination programme would have to submit a separate application for approval to the committee."
Vaccination programmes require EU approval on health and safety grounds and because of the export trade implications for the whole EU of allowing vaccination in one or other member state.
Meanwhile, Slovakia today became the eighth EU member state to confirm an outbreak of bird flu.
The H5 virus was found in two wild birds, and samples were being sent to the EU's special laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey, in an attempt to establish whether the cases involved the deadly H5N1 strain.
Greece, Austria, Hungary and Croatia all confirmed new cases of bird flu today, while German officials were analysing another 22 dead birds suspected of carrying the disease.
The Slovak authorities have already triggered pre-agreed control measures that any EU country finding bird flu must apply.
They involve setting up a 3km protection zone around the area where any infected birds are found and establishing a surrounding "surveillance zone" a further 7km deep.
A commission statement said the Slovak authorities were in close touch with their Hungarian and Austrian counterparts because the outbreaks were in a region in which the 10km surveillance zones crossed the Slovak-Austrian and Slovak-Hungarian borders.
Slovakia has joined Greece, France, Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Hungary and Germany on the list of European countries to have confirmed bird flu.
At today's vaccination talks, German, Austrian, Danish and Portuese veterinary experts led opposition to the French and Dutch bid.
The UK also raised concerns, citing the fact that no vaccine to tackle the H5N1 strain directly was yet available, and that the more general vaccination held no guarantees of curing bird flu or preventing its spread.
"There is no bird flu in poultry in Britain - or in poultry anywhere in the EU," a British government spokesman said. "But we are keeping vaccination under urgent review, and we remain to be convinced that it is the right solution."
A European commission official confirmed there was no guarantee that vaccination would work, and said the export status of a country that vaccinated its poultry would be in doubt.