Australia’s Bird flu outbreak has grown again over the weekend, with the virus being detected at another farm in the biosecurity zone in Sydney’s north-west.
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00:00The second outbreak has occurred here at a chicken meat farm in Glasodia that's around
00:07one and a half kilometres away from the egg farm where bird flu was first detected last
00:12week. Authorities are still trying to piece together how that virus might have spread
00:17but we know that this particular strain of bird flu is airborne and could have been transmitted
00:22via machinery that had come into contact with the birds. The biosecurity zone in this area
00:28has been expanded by an additional two kilometres to protect other surrounding farms so no products
00:33or machinery will be coming in or out of this zone. Now this farm here is a lot smaller
00:39than the first farm where the flu was detected last week. There are around 86,000 chickens
00:45here that will now have to be killed along with the more than 200,000 chickens at the
00:50first farm as authorities work to contain this outbreak. Now they are assuring the community
00:55that this particular strain of bird flu isn't the same as the H5N1 strain that's been causing
01:02concern globally and Premier Chris Minn says there's no threat to human consumption or
01:07to the state's current supply of chicken and eggs. The advice from health authorities is
01:13that it's not dangerous in terms of human consumption. Obviously poultry has to be prepared
01:18correctly but that's the case at any time whether there's a particular strain of bird
01:23flu or not. The quarantine measures in place are working. There's four farms that are currently
01:28under quarantine. It means that vehicles exiting have to be stopped. The testing regime that
01:35was put in place after the initial bird was found or the bird flu was found for the other
01:40farms has unfortunately identified its contagion but within that quarantine area. Authorities
01:48are confident that they can eradicate this flu as they have done so three times previously
01:52here in New South Wales, the most recent being in 2013 in Yonge. And what's even more reassuring
01:59is they say that this current outbreak is playing out very similarly to the previous
02:03ones that they've dealt with in the past. So some reassuring news there for consumers
02:08but no doubt devastating for farmers that have had to destroy all of their chickens.