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Turkeys in the barn: one million animals killed
Photo: Carmen Jaspersen / dpa
Because avian influenza is spreading faster and faster in Lower Saxony, the State Ministry of Economics has declared the epidemic to be a crisis.
This was announced by the Ministry of Agriculture under Minister Barbara Otte-Kinast.
"Unfortunately, we perceive an even greater dynamic than in 2020," said the CDU politician.
With the discovery of the animal disease case, a crisis center is activated in your ministry in Lower Saxony.
A crisis coordination team is also being set up at the State Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (Laves) in Oldenburg.
Avian influenza has been rampant in Lower Saxony for months.
So far, the national reference laboratory of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute has confirmed avian influenza eight times in livestock in Lower Saxony.
Avian influenza was found in 14 cases of wild birds.
Many districts have already ordered that free-range poultry must be brought into the stables.
According to Laves, avian influenza was most recently found in a duck and broiler farm in the district of Cuxhaven.
A million animals killed
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As a result, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of animals are being killed again and again, and in the last week alone it is said to have been around 70,000 turkeys and ducks.
In the last wave, between the end of 2020 and the summer of this year, there were more than a million animals.
The financial damage is also high: At that time, the Lower Saxony animal disease fund recorded a loss of almost 23 million euros due to avian influenza.
That was the worst outbreak of this epidemic in Lower Saxony to date.
Stable compulsory in neighboring countries too
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Because of the risk of bird plague in neighboring Lower Saxony, the state of Bremen has also made poultry stable from Monday.
About 750 keepers with about 14,000 animals are affected, according to the consumer protection department.
Since October there have been increasing reports of cases of avian influenza among wild birds in northern Germany, the department said.
In Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania there have also been isolated outbreaks in large or small holdings of domestic poultry.
jlk / dpa
