[Cyclefrance]

Not exactly the news to make one feel proud to be British!

Latest info on the H5N1 outbreak in Suffolk.

Despite assertions from the company concerned, Bernard Matthews Farms, that all its turkeys were home-grown and no meat was imported from Hungary, it now transpires that it does actually import 40 tons per week of partly processed turkey meat from an abbatoir in Hungary that is 30 miles from a farm where there has been a recent outbreak of HN51 in geese (the abbatoir handles both turkeys and geese).

Furthermore the strain of HN51 found at the Suffolk farm is identical to the virus found in the infected geese in Hungary.

It doesn't end there. Fearing a ban on British meats by European countries, the Government body reponsible for managing the outbreak, DEFRA, permitted a further import from the same abbatoir in Hungary to proceed this week, in full knowledge of the Hungarian outbreak.

There's more. The shipment has been allowed inside the plant despite a cordon and procedures introduced precisely to prevent such a risk, and, worse still, the imported eat may have already been processed into finished products and be on supermarket shelves.

There is also the concern that discarded cuts from this source may have not been properly disposed of, and therefore have been available to wildlife such as foxes and rats.

Another lovely mess - but that's what you get when you leave it to incapable government bodies to handle such situations...