The avian flu virus that led to the culling of 160,000 birds on a Bernard Matthews turkey farm may have entered the human food supply, Government food safety experts admitted yesterday.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said it was investigating the possibility as part of a wider inquiry into the outbreak on the farm at Holton in Suffolk. There was no threat to human health, the FSA said.
The most likely cause of the outbreak is now believed to be frozen poultry pieces imported from Hungary, which may have been contaminated with the virus, to a processing plant next to the Suffolk farm.
Professor Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist said packaged turkey meat could be removed from supermarket shelves following the disclosure. "I think that is exactly what the Food Standards Agency will be looking at now," he told Channel 4 News.
The FSA confirmed it was investigating but said it had no plans at present to recall turkey products. A spokesman said: "Even if infected poultry had entered the food chain, and we don't know that yet, it is not a human health risk. There is not one case round the world in which humans have contracted the disease from eating infected meat..."
Dead giveaway: the virus emerges at a Matthews-owned corporate goose farm in Hungary, and shortly thereafter in Britian, blamed of course on wild bird vectors.
Yes, birds always fly to the Northwest in January.
Despite the questions about whether British turkey is in fact either British or turkey in the flat earth commercial world, it's worth noting that most of the outbreaks are occurring at poultry farms along the lines of international commerce: the outbreak in Hungary came from geese farmed in Turkey.
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