New bird flu cases are a warning for Norfolk poultry farms

Defra has confirmed two different strains of highly-pathogenic avian influenza were found in commercial poultry in those counties on November 5 and 17 - the first UK cases since February.

The return of the virus is a major concern for East Anglia, which was at the centre of the nation's worst-ever outbreak of avian influenza during the autumn of 2022, with millions of birds culled.

Mark Gorton, founding director of Traditional Norfolk Poultry, based at Shropham, near Attleborough, is also a member of the NFU's national poultry board and represents the food and farming sector on the Norfolk Business Board.

He said his firm has already begun its Christmas campaign on November 10 after a "good growing season" for his free-range turkeys - hundreds of thousands of which will be slaughtered and supplied to retailers in the coming weeks.

But, in light of the recent bird flu outbreaks, the company has contacted the 70 farms it works with to reinforce the need for vigilant biosecurity.

"These new cases serve as a timely reminder that this disease has not gone away, and will never go away," he said. "It is established now in the UK, and there is always a risk that people get complacent when you have not had an outbreak for such a long while.

"We are coming into the window where wild birds are migrating in and we have to be on guard.

"It could just as easily have been in Norfolk or on one of our farms, so we have gone around everybody and said: Make sure you are doing what you should be doing, make sure your disinfectants are clean and fresh, and your biosecurity is as good as it can be."

Mr Gorton said smallholders and back-yard poultry keepers also shared the responsibility of protecting against the virus, with new government rules enforced earlier this year requiring all keepers to register their birds - regardless of the size of their flock.

"It is not just us as commercial farmers, it is everybody - it is the people keeping poultry at home or on smallholdings, they all need to be registered now, whether you have got one chicken or a flock of 50," he said. 

"It makes it much more easy for people to trace birds when an outbreak occurs, so it is really important that people do that. It is in everybody’s benefit to register their flocks."

Free-range turkeys at Traditional Norfolk Poultry (Image: TNP) Mr Gorton said progress on finding a viable, economical vaccine to protect flocks against bird flu had been "frustratingly slow", with the surveillance requirements for vaccinated flocks being a "big stumbling block" for legislation changes.

"The work carries on, but the drive perhaps wains a little bit when you are not in the midst of the battle - and of course the authorities dealing with this are the same people dealing with bluetongue [livestock] virus, so the momentum has slowed down," he said.

"We were hoping that we might have been in a position this year to vaccinated maybe turkeys and geese, but there is no sign of that and we are now questioning whether next year is going to be a realistic proposition or not."