Macedonia bans poultry imports from UK

Macedonia has imposed a ban on the imports of poultry and poultry parts from UK, news reaching here from Skopje reported on Monday.

The order for halting was issued on Sunday night by Macedonia's Agriculture Ministry's Veterinary Administration after H5N1 avian flu outbreak on a British bird farm was confirmed, reported Macedonia's independent news agency Makfax.

"Whenever we are notified that bird flu breaks out in a foreign country, we withdraw import licenses immediately. That's what we did last week when bird flu cases were detected in Romania and Hungary," Macedonia's Agriculture Ministry spokesperson Sonja Trajkova was quoted as saying.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu broke out on a turkey farm in north-eastern England last week, which resulted in 159,000 birds being culled.

Despite the virulence of the disease among poultry, it doesn't pose a large-scale threat to human beings because it can't easily jump from person to person.

Source: Xinhua