Statement on Avian Influenza
Fred Landeg, Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer, said today that Defra's priority is to ensure that we are able to eradicate avian influenza as swiftly and effectively as possible.
Early detection and slaughter of infected birds and dangerous contacts, and the imposition of movement controls around the infected premises, provide the most effective method of achieving this. We have eradicated previous outbreaks of high pathogenic avian influenza successfully in domestic birds using this method.
Vaccination offers potential benefits but currently available vaccines are too limited to provide a general solution.
Crucially, though these vaccines protect against disease, they will not prevent birds from becoming infected and shedding virus. Because the symptoms of disease would be masked, the hidden presence of disease would pose a serious problem.
The vaccines also have severe practical limitations in that they need to be delivered by individually injecting each bird. It can take up to three weeks for the birds to develop optimum protective immunity and some poultry require two doses.
However, we of course keep our policy under review as the vaccine manufacturers continue to develop their products.
Further information: see the avian influenza pages in our animal health section.
Page published: 22 February 2006