New Zealand halts poultry exports as bird flu found at egg farm

Exports of poultry products worth about NZ$190 million ($112 million) a year will cease until New Zealand can once again attest to being free of bird flu, Food Safety Minister Andrew Hoggard said Monday in Wellington.  

“For trade purposes we have to say for a number of countries that we are free of high pathogen avian influenza,” Hoggard told Radio New Zealand. “We can obviously no longer say that at the moment. Once we are able to say that again then we’ll be working to restore that trade.”

Biosecurity New Zealand has placed strict movement controls on the commercial egg farm after testing confirmed its chickens are infected with bird flu, but said it is not the strain causing concern globally.

Tests at the Mainland Poultry free-range farm identified “a high pathogenic H7N6 subtype of avian influenza,” Biosecurity New Zealand deputy director-general Stuart Anderson said in a statement. “While it is not the H5N1 type circulating among wildlife around the world that has caused concern, we are taking the find seriously.” 

Concerns about bird flu have risen as the H5N1 strain of the virus has spread throughout US poultry and dairy farms. While most human infections of bird flu continue to be in farm workers exposed to infected animals, health officials are on the watch for any indications of spread among humans.

Anderson said the strain found on the New Zealand farm “is unlikely to be transmitted to mammals.”

There have been no reports of ill or dead birds on other poultry farms, and there are no human health or food safety concerns, he said.

Biosecurity New Zealand believes laying hens foraging outside the shed were exposed to a low pathogenic virus from wild waterfowl, which can mutate on interaction with chickens.

A 10-kilometer (six-mile) buffer zone has been placed around the rural farm as well as restrictions preventing movement of animals, equipment and feed. About 40,000 birds will initially be culled, Hoggard said.