25.02.2006

France confirmed the presence of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza at a farm in the east of the country where thousands of turkeys had died.
It was the first case of the virus in domestic farm birds in the European Union and threatened to deal a severe blow to France's struggling poultry industry, worth 6 billion euros ($7 billion) a year and the biggest in the bloc.
Laboratory tests by Afssa, France's national agency for nutritional safety, showed the virus found at the turkey farm was 99 percent homologous with that found in one of the ducks, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
Poultry sales in France are already down by about 30 percent.
The industry received another blow on Friday when Japan's embassy in Paris said Tokyo had imposed a temporary ban on imports of French poultry products after avian influenza was found at the turkey farm.
Local sources said about 80 percent of the turkeys at the French farm, in a region famous for the quality of its chickens, had died. The remaining birds were culled.