The Czech Republic will kill all chickens at a farm after an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu was detected, the State Veterinary Administration said on Thursday.
Authorities will kill 188,000 chickens at the farm in Libotenice, 60 km (40 miles) north of Prague, the administration said. Around 600,000 eggs will also be destroyed.
At the end of October, the country killed around 5,000 geese were after a bird flu outbreak at a farm in Rohozna.
Avian influenza, also known as bird flu, has been spreading through Europe and Asia in recent months. More than 43 million animals have been killed worldwide because of bird flu outbreaks in the first nine months of 2021. Most of the killed animals are farm animals raised exclusively for the food industry.
The number of people infected with bird flu is also on the rise, which has experts concerned. They think that the virus may have evolved into one that spreads easily between people.
Animal welfare organizations and politicians have called for urgent changes in the animal farming industry to prevent the next pandemic.
“To prevent the next pandemic, we need to change the way we treat non-human animals. Animal welfare is closely linked to animal health, which in turn is linked to human health,” animal welfare organization Four Paws said on their website, calling industrial animal farming one of the biggest threats to public health.
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