Avian flu outbreak 'devastating' - poultry firm boss

Avian flu was confirmed at a farm on the Norfolk and Suffolk border earlier this week

The "devastating" impact of avian flu on farmers has been described by the managing director of a poultry firm.

Mark Gorton, the founder of Traditional Norfolk Poultry, spoke after the H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu, was confirmed at a turkey farm at Elveden, Suffolk, close to the border with west Norfolk.

As a result a 3km (1.9 mile) protection zone and 10km (6.2 mile) surveillance zone have been put in place around the premises and all poultry will be culled.

Mr Gorton said "thousands" of birds would killed in a bid to limit the spread of the disease and said it was a "massive blow" ahead of Christmas.

It comes as several cases of avian flu were confirmed in the East of England by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) during the past week.

An unspecified number of avian flu cases have been reported at Billing Aquadrome, near Northampton, which said it was "very sad" to share news of what had happened.

Bird flu is caused by a virus that infects birds and sometimes other animals, including foxes, seals and otters.

Defra said the risk to the public was very low, but people should not touch or move any dead or sick wild birds.

Mark Gorton said the loss of "thousands" of turkeys carried an emotional and financial blow

Mr Gorton said: "We've spent all this time looking after them [turkeys].

"They've all been free-range so they've all been running around having as good of a life as we could possibly give them.

"Then all of a sudden, out of the blue, it's literally overnight. This disease happens so quickly.

"It's absolutely devastating for everyone involved. For the farmers who have spent the last six months looking after these birds it's absolutely heart-wrenching."

He added that the firm and its farmers would "hopefully still have enough [stock] to supply all of our customers at Christmas".

"It's really hard to describe," he said. "We know bird flu is a threat so we're obviously already taking precautions... we're living under this almost storm cloud of bird flu that can strike at any time.

"It's massively, massively stressful, it's awful."