Some Questions about H5N1 in Suffolk
Why has the vaccination of poultry been systematically rejected in the UK even when free range poultry owners who want to vaccinate their own birds, may well be at risk from the virus?Why has surveillance of poultry been so lax? Why are birds not systematically tested for high pathogenic bird flu?
What has the Head of the Poultry industry in Hungary said in answer to questions from the UK - and what were those questions?
What efforts have been made to find out whether the abattoir at Kecskemet that slaughters some of the Bernard Matthews birds, had also slaughtered infected birds from the area of Csongrad in southern Hungary where H5N1 had been found in January?
How did infection from the first shed spread to 3 others? What were the infected chicks fed with - what was in it. Had feed come from Hungary?
Why is the Bernard Matthews plant not liable for prosecution (as was Bobby Waugh in 2001) if lax bio-security at their plants was responsible for the utbreak?
From what fund will compensation be paid to Bernard Matthews?
Where did the chicks first seen to be infected come from? Were they imported? What paper trail is there about them?
When did DEFRA first know that the Bernard Matthews plant in Suffolk was importing turkey meat from Hungary? Why was the TRACES database unaware of the imports?
Is imported meat ever properly checked for the virus?
What exactly was the nature of the "most rigorous independent scientific tests available" that Bernard Matthews claims tested his meat products before they were offered to the public?
When did the Bernard Matthews plant finally admit that consignments of poultry meat from Hungary had been received at the time of the outbreak?
Why did neither David Miliband nor Lord Rooker mention the Hungary connection in Parliament at the start of the outbreak. Why did they not know - or did they?
What account has the government taken of the balance between commercial sensitivity and the public interest during the outbreak?
What are the lessons to be learned from this outbreak of H5N1?
March 9 2007 ~ Together with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) we're working hard to learn all we can from this episode."
- Bernard Matthews' full page advertisements in several national newspapers today carry his personal claim that "my turkey is completely safe to eat". He thanks the public for their "support" . He insists that " I've never stopped instilling my core values of quality, value and customer care into every Bernard Matthews product."
The adverts say that the products have undergone "the most rigorous independent scientific tests available"
The move is as predictable as the language is breathtaking. As an example of the spinmeister's art it is extraordinary - and was probably very expensive. Now that a spotlight has been shone on his factory methods, little wonder that Bernard Matthews is anxious to persuade people that "Our standards of hygiene and bio-security are some of the most stringent in the world" - but the nonsensical claim that it was the plant's "hygiene and biosecurity" that was instrumental in "detecting the virus, containing it and eradicating it in 72 hours" is shameless when the flaws in both have been so well documented and when decent free-range poultry keepers were inconvenienced and worried for weeks. On it goes... "... we will not be complacent because bird flu did strike us. Together with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) we're working hard to learn all we can from this episode " Unfortunately, in the area of animal disease, the UK's record on learning lessons is pitiful. In this outbreak, there are many unanswered questions about where the virus came from and it is looking more and more as though as though answers are not ever going to be easy to extract. There are too many who would rather they remained unanswered. British taxes are going to be spent on paying the company its £600,000 compensation. Free range poultry owners are not going to be allowed to protect their birds because of a much repeated piece of nonsense. Intensive factory farms seem set to go on transforming the miserably short, unnatural lives of farmed poultry into vacuum packed meat products for the supermarkets. That the cost of all this is much too high must surely now be self evident.
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