An obligation to keep and shield poultry and other bird species will once again be imposed for the whole of the Netherlands. Agriculture Minister Piet Adema announced this on Wednesday. Not only commercial keepers have to keep their birds indoors, but also hobby keepers.
“Unfortunately, the high number of infections makes it clear that extra precaution is needed,” Adema writes to the House of Representatives.
Over the past two months, there have been bird flu outbreaks at commercial poultry farms and hobby keepers. Every day there are new reports of dead wild birds being found. “The bird flu virus has not disappeared from the Netherlands this summer and the situation will not improve with the coming bird migration,” says the new agriculture minister.
Bird flu is normally no longer found in the summer, but last autumn and winter ‘exceptional’ birds became infected, the cabinet said earlier.
wild birds
That is why a national confinement obligation has been in place since October last year, which has been extended continuously. At the end of June, the cabinet announced that companies no longer had to keep their poultry indoors in some regions.
But the risk of further spread of the bird flu virus has increased in recent weeks, also in regions where a confinement obligation was still in force. An additional risk is the migration of wild birds, which started this month and in which the migratory birds carry new virus variants.
Adema realizes that the national confinement obligation is ‘another extra setback’ for poultry farmers, but says that given the high number of infections, this cannot be avoided.