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LAURENT GILLIERON
Hundreds of chickens were slaughtered on the French island of Corsica, and in Denmark, authorities ordered the slaughter of more than 25,000 birds after the virus struck the west of the country. The virus was most recently discovered in the Netherlands and Belgium, among others.
The French authorities asked all poultry farmers to lock up their animals to protect them from wild birds that could be infected. Denmark suspended the export of eggs outside the EU.
The bird flu virus is not harmful to humans, but it is devastating to agriculture. At the beginning of the month, 200,000 birds had to be killed in the Netherlands.
Cases of avian influenza were only recently detected in Germany. Several wild birds that were found dead in Schleswig-Holstein were affected, as announced by the German Ministry of Agriculture in early November. According to the information, these were viruses of the H5N8 and H5N5 types, which are common in wild birds.
