UK's food watchdog examines meat for H5N1 virus

Britain’s food watchdog, The Food Standards Agency (FSA), on Friday said that it had started a probe to establish whether the avian influenza recently discovered at a Suffolk turkey farm has spread into the food chain.

After getting alarmed with preliminary scientific tests that showed the strain of avian flu in British poultry farm that led to the culling of 2,600 turkeys at the Suffolk farm and recent two serious outbreaks in Hungary may well be identical, the FSA decided to check that no infected meat has got into human food.

Bernard Matthews, Europe's largest turkey producer where last week almost 160,000 turkeys were culled after the discovery of the H5N1 virus, has acknowledged shipping 38 tonnes of partially processed turkey meat from Hungary per week.

Despite the fact that the deadly H5N1 virus does not pose a food safety risk, the food agency said it will still check whether meat contaminated with bird flu had reached shops as it is illegal for infected meat to be in our food, and warned it would take any suitable action if it were found to be there.

"I couldn't tell you what we would do. But we wouldn't want that meat there. At the moment we are not in the process of withdrawing any turkey products from supermarket shelves," a Food Standards Agency spokeswoman said. "If infected meat had got into the food chain it wouldn't be a safety risk to consumers."

Meanwhile, the government's chief scientist Professor Sir David King warned turkey products may have to be recalled because it has been established that Bernard Matthews had been transporting turkey meat from Hungary to the Suffolk farm where the H5N1 strain of the virus was discovered.

Ben Bradshaw, the environment minister warned that legal action could be launched at the plant, following the latest developments and possible bio-security breaches.

Though Bernard Matthews firm denied breaching rules on imports of meat but it has now temporarily stopped Hungarian imports and exports as a precaution while Hungarian and UK government vets carry out their investigations.

The Health Protection Agency announced that at least 400 workers at Bernard Matthews, the firm at the centre of the UK outbreak, were identified as having been in close contact with contaminated turkeys. All have been offered the seasonal flu vaccine and 200 of them had already come forward, the agency said.

FSA has decided to include arrangements at the farm's adjacent plant for food processing as part of its investigation.

The H5N1 virus has entrapped the Middle East, Africa and Europe since it re-emerged in Asia in 2003 and although it remains largely an animal disease, it can be fatal for those people who come into close contact with infected birds.