Special report: Global fight against bird flu

    LONDON, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- The British government announced on Tuesday that the H5 bird flu virus has been detected at Redgrave Park Farm near Diss in Suffolk, eastern England, where all 6,500 birds will be culled.

    A statement issued by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said that preliminary tests showed the turkeys in the farm had the H5 strain of bird flu.

    Government vets could not yet confirm if the birds had contracted the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain which has killed some 200 people worldwide.

    Redgrave Poultry, which rents the farm, said that all employees at the site had been given antiviral drugs as a precaution, and it hoped this would be a contained outbreak.

    The company said that all birds on the site including some 5,000 turkeys, 1,000 ducks and 500 geese, will be culled at the premises.

    Sixty turkeys out of a flock of 1,000 from one coop on the site were found dead. The site was immediately isolated and enclosed with additional bio-security measures.

    A 3-km protection zone and a 10-km surveillance zone have been set up. Police have been keeping guard outside the entrance to the farm.

    Inside the zones, bird movements will be restricted and all birds must be housed or isolated from contact with wild birds.

    More than 160,000 birds were killed after an outbreak of the virulent H5N1 strain of the disease at a Bernard Matthews turkey farm in Suffolk in February.