put in place<\/a> around the farm near Newtownstewart, the Department for Agriculture, Rural Affairs and the Environment (Daera) has said.<\/p>\nIt is the first suspected outbreak in Northern Ireland since November 2025.<\/p>\n
Three have been confirmed in the 2025\/26 season.<\/p>\n
The Chief Veterinary Officer urged all flock keepers to adhere to strict biosecurity measures to prevent spread of the disease, which poses a serious threat to the significant poultry sector in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Brian Dooher said samples from the affected premises will be analysed at the National Reference Laboratory to confirm the outbreak while humane culling gets underway.<\/p>\n
A housing order means all poultry must be kept indoors or otherwise separate from wild birds and a ban on bird shows remains in place.<\/p>\n
Temporary control zones are routinely declared around the site of an outbreak to limit the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n
It means enhanced record keeping and certain movement restrictions for poultry businesses within a 3km radius of the affected premises.<\/p>\n
What is bird flu?<\/p>\n
Bird flu is a disease caused by a virus that infects birds and sometimes other animals, such as foxes, seals and otters.<\/p>\n
It spreads through contaminated feed and water, or through birds’ droppings and saliva.<\/p>\n
The major strain – circulating among wild birds worldwide – is a type of the virus known as H5N1. It emerged in China in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n
Bird migration has led to outbreaks in domestic and wild birds.<\/p>\n
The virus has in very rare cases infected humans but experts say the current risk to humans is low.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A thousand pheasants are to be culled after suspected bird flu was detected at a commercial poultry premises…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5650,49,48,95815,95816,84,204292],"class_list":["post-515939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-bird-flu","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-commercial-poultry","tag-county-tyrone","tag-health","tag-newtownstewart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}