Bird flu swan ‘left for days’

The official response to Britain’s first feared case of avian flu was criticised today as it emerged that scientists had taken more than a week to confirm that a swan found dead in a Scottish harbour was carrying the pathogenic H5 strain.

Details of the eight-day delay emerged as the agricultural community awaited results of second-stage tests to confirm if the wild bird was carrying the H5N1 strain, which is potentially lethal to humans.

Locals in Cellardyke, Fife, said that the bird, thought to be a native mute swan, had been drifting in the tide for several days before it was reported to veterinary experts on Wednesday. It was collected at noon the following day, by which time it had been partially eaten.

The area was made subject to European restrictions designed to prevent the spread of the disease on Monday, five days later.

It was not until yesterday that results of tests at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey, revealed that the bird was infected with the deadly H5 subtype of the disease. Results to confirm whether it was carrying the H5N1 form, which could jump the species gap to infect humans, are expected later today.

If the results are positive, it would be the first time the H5N1 strain has been found in a wild British bird since the epidemic began and could have a crippling effect on the domestic poultry industry.

Charles Milne, Scotland’s chief veterinary surgeon, was today forced to defend the length of time it took to confirm the infection.

Mr Milne told a press conference in Edinburgh: “The timelines could not have been tighter in my opinion. We got the results at the earliest possible opportunity and measures were put in place.”

He added: “We don’t know how long bird was there for. The potential was that it had been there for some time.”

He said that the bird, which was badly decayed, was believed to be an indigenous mute swan rather than a migratory visitor. Experts say that this suggests it became infected with the virus on British soil.

Grahame Madge, from the RSPB, said: “If the dead bird is a mute swan, the chances are it is a resident so you can speculate that it did not bring the disease here, so something else would have done.”

Cellardyke, a picturesque village near St Andrew’s, will remain under isolation until the second-stage H5N1 tests have been completed. Free-range farmers in Fife have been told to bring their stock indoors while the rest of Scotland has been put on standby.

Checkpoints have been set up to prevent the transport of farmed birds across a 3km (1.8 mile) exclusion zone, in accordance with the European Union’s strategy to prevent spread of the disease.

Donald Peddie, who owns a large-scale poultry farm six miles from Cellardyke, criticised the delay in informing farmers of the likely presence if the disease. He said that he only learned about the feared arrival of H5N1 on the television news last night.

Mr Peddie, who has 22,000 chickens in barns and battery sheds at Kilduncan Poultry Farm at Kingsbarns, said: “I think there are questions about how the information came out. I would have expected to be contacted a bit earlier than today. This is obviously a bit worrying. I was not expecting any discovery to be this close.”

Dan Young, 45, who reported the dead swan to authorities, described finding “a mangled heap of feathers”. The St Andrews University researcher, whose work includes aspects of virology, said he had been alerted by a friend, who said he thought a heron was lying in the harbour.

“I went and had a look and it was obviously not a heron. I contacted Defra and within an hour the duty vet got back to me asking where it was and saying they would pick it up,” he said.

Mr Young added: “It had obviously been dead for a while, a few days probably. It looked like a mangled heap of feathers. It had been in the water for a while. It had obviously been pecked at or eaten by something. It was torn open.”

Locals in Cellardyke said that they had seen the dead bird floating in the harbour for several days.

Richard Ingram and Aileen Bracken, whose house overlooks the harbour, said their three children had been playing on the beach near to where the swan was found.

Mr Ingram, 34, said: “Somebody local saw it and took the precaution of putting up a makeshift notice to say not to touch the bird until it was taken away.

“They contacted Defra and it was removed pretty quickly afterwards - I’d say within 24 hours. In the week since we haven’t thought anything about it until last night when we heard about the bird flu scare on the 10 o’clock news.”

Catherine Richardson, 20, who works at a harbour restaurant, said: “A woman saw the swan getting pecked by seagulls, that was a few days ago.”

The surveillance zone is likely to include between 10 and 20 poultry producing farms of various sizes, James Withers, of the Scottish National Farmers’ Union, said last night.

“Fife is not the biggest poultry farming area of Scotland but there are poultry farms everywhere,” he said. “Units would vary in size from between 500 to 40,000 head of fowl.”

A national bird flu readiness test called Exercise Hawthorn that began yesterday was halted last night to enable animal health experts to concentrate on the real outbreak in Scotland.

Debby Reynolds, the United Kingdom’s Chief Veterinary Officer, said: “I brought to an end the national avian influenza exercise to ensure that we can bring all our resources to bear on this situation.”

Movement restrictions were imposed on a poultry farm in Orkney last month after 100 birds were found dead while the farm’s owner was on holiday. But tests found no evidence of avian flu.

There have been more than 40 suspected cases of bird flu investigated in Britain since the start of the year. Until now none has tested positive.

Scientists have long considered it a matter of time before H5N1 reaches Britain, and even if the swan is found not to have died of the strain it is likely to spread here soon. Cases have been confirmed in France and Germany, where an outbreak on a turkey farm in Saxony was also announced yesterday. H5 flu strains have been reported on rare occasions in Britain, most recently in 1991 when H5N1 was identified in turkeys.

WHAT NEXT?

If the bird is found to have died of H5N1:

All poultry kept on a premises confirmed as infected will be culled. Culling or “slaughter on suspicion” may be ordered at a premises if there is a strong suspicion of avian flu and a high likelihood that it could spread

Farmers within a 1.8 mile radius protection zone will be required to house their poultry. Free-range farmers who are forced to bring birds indoors may keep their free-range status for a limited period

Within a surveillance zone of six miles, vets will check birds for any signs of bird flu, and movement of eggs and poultry will be restricted

A short-term national movement ban on birds and hatching eggs will be brought in as a precaution while the outbreak is investigated. Low risk movements would still be permitted under licence

Premises in areas where birds are at low risk of exposure to the virus will have restrictions imposed for 21 days while checks are carried out

Mass vaccination is not expected to be part of Britain’s response. The Scottish Chief Veterinary Officer says that it will be considered “right from the start” but does not believe it will be pursued at this stage. Professor Sir David King, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, has said that vaccination could mask signs of the spread of the disease

Simon Freeman