Authorities ordered vendors Monday to pull an estimated 15 tons of chicken
meat from store shelves, after discovering it had come from several farms in a
central Romanian town where the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus was found.
Over the weekend, an outbreak of H5N1 was reported and confirmed in the town
of Codlea, the National Animal Health Agency said.
Authorities will cull 1 million birds in Codlea, and poultry exports from
Romania may be stopped, Chairman of the Poultry Breeders' Union Ilie Van told
state news agency Rompres.
One company in Codlea was found to have delivered hundreds of live chickens
and tons of meat to counties across Romania without carrying out required health
checks, Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur said. The counties included
Vrancea, Dolj, Hunedoara, Sibiu, Brasov, Mures, Prahova, Covasna, Valcea, Galati
and Bucharest.
"We have introduced severe measures for the sale of live chicken, and if we
find the law has been broken, we will be merciless," Flutur said Monday.
Romania has had bird flu outbreaks in 53 communities since October, but the
three new cases detected over the weekend _ in Codlea, Fagaras city and Hurezu
village _ were the first in the northwest region of Transylvania.
The case in Codlea was confirmed Sunday as H5N1. Further tests were being
carried out on birds from Hurezu and Fagaras.
The National Animal Health Agency sent warnings Monday to poultry vendors not
to sell products from Brasov county, where Codlea and Fagaras are located,
agency head Gabriel Predoi said.
In the central city of Targu Mures, authorities on Monday seized 17,000 eggs
and 160 kilograms (352 pounds) of turkey meat that had come from Codlea.
All birds in the central city of Fagaras were to be culled as a precaution,
and the city was put under quarantine, authorities said. Residents were to be
given the antiviral drug Tamiflu.
Since October, Romania has culled more than 150,000 birds.
The H5N1 strain has spread with migratory birds from Asia to at least 10
countries in Europe and Africa, and scientists fear it could mutate into a form
that is easily transmitted between humans, sparking a pandemic.
Romania has recorded no human cases of bird flu, but at least 115 people have
died from H5N1, most of them infected directly by sick birds, according to the
World Health Organization.
