AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -The Dutch Agriculture Ministry on Thursday issued a nationwide order to poultry farms to keep their birds inside and banned bird shows following the discovery of a case of bird flu on a chicken farm in the north of the country.
The outbreak in the northern Drenthe province, the first in the Netherlands since March, led to an order to cull around 71,000 chickens last week.
The highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called bird flu, has killed or led to the culling of hundreds of millions of poultry globally in recent years, most of them laying hens, which sent egg prices rocketing. The disease can also spread to humans and other animals, raising fears of a new pandemic.
(Reporting by Bart Meijer and Inti Landauro; Editing by GV De Clercq and Susan Fenton)
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