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80 percent imported goods: bird flu decimates stocks of possible Christmas geese

2022-10-12T13:11:03.013Z


Christmas is in a good two months - for some people it's the moment to start planning the festive meal. However, the bird flu could make a popular dish rare: the goose is threatened like never before.


Enlarge image

Geese in Osnabrück (symbol image): The prices for the animals are increasing

Photo: Countrypixel / IMAGO

Poultry farmers fear that some will have to do without the traditional Christmas goose on the festive days in December.

The reason: bird flu.

"Never before has the goose been in such danger as it is now," said Lorenz Eskildsen, chairman of the Federal Association of Peasant Goose Husbandry.

In recent months, colleagues in Germany, Poland and Hungary have lost significant parts of their stocks due to bird flu.

This not only endangers the goose leg on the German plate, but also the existence of many companies.

According to Eskildsen, around 80 percent of the geese come to Germany every year as imported goods from Poland and Hungary.

The remaining 20 percent of the animals grew up in Germany and were slaughtered there.

The Polish main veterinary office said that so far this year the bird flu had been recorded in two goose farms.

This will probably have no impact on the market.

However, the slaughter season will only begin in three weeks.

In the UK, warnings have been given of an imminent shortage of turkeys over the Christmas period due to bird flu.

True pandemic in wild birds

According to the EU health authority ECDC, Europe is experiencing the worst bird flu epidemic ever recorded.

The geographical extent is also unique and stretches from Svalbard to Portugal and Ukraine, the authority announced at the beginning of the month.

Timm Harder, head of the National Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI), recently said that the outbreaks in previous years were mainly seasonal due to bird migration, but now they occur all year round.

All of North America is also affected.

One could speak of a real pandemic in wild birds.

For the North Sea alone, it can therefore be assumed that tens of thousands of birds fell victim to the virus this year.

This also affects the prices.

While last year buyers paid about 4.50 euros for a kilogram of a goose raised and slaughtered abroad, this year they would have to pay twice as much, Eskildsen said.

For a German goose, the jump in price is smaller: "Last year it was 15.95 euros per kilo, this year it's three euros more."

Penguins are also affected

Dozens of endangered African penguins have also died from bird flu in South Africa this year.

Since mid-August, 28 animals from a colony on Boulders Beach near Cape Town have "died or become infected and therefore had to be euthanized," said veterinarian David Roberts of the South African Foundation for Coastal Bird Conservation (SANCCOB) in early October.

The colony at Boulders Beach in Simon's Town is an important breeding ground for African penguins and home to around 3,000 of these birds.

African penguins are found exclusively in the waters of southern Africa and are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

The bird flu virus, which is normally transmitted through the droppings of birds, was discovered in South Africa in May last year and, according to the authorities, has already infected several species of seabirds there.

The bird flu virus currently circulating is relatively harmless to humans.

According to the ECDC, despite the strong spread, there have only been a small number of transmissions to humans worldwide without symptoms or with mild courses.

Therefore, the risk to the population is low, albeit slightly higher for people occupationally exposed to infected birds.

ani/dpa/AFP

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2022-10-12

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