A Victorian egg farm has euthanised thousands of chickens and is now in quarantine after a strain of bird flu was detected. Dr Joanne Sillince from the Australian Chicken Growers' Council says the outbreak appears to be contained.
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00:00 Both the egg and the meat industries have been on high alert for a long time because
00:06 of the naughty one in Antarctica.
00:08 So if you like, this is a big and very reasonable test of our defences.
00:14 Look, I have to say, the farmer did the right thing.
00:17 I mean, the birds got flu and if anybody's ever had the flu, you know what that feels
00:21 like.
00:22 And so he called in the vets very quickly.
00:25 The state government jumped in very quickly.
00:28 The federal government did the testing very quickly.
00:31 They're moving to isolate that farm and manage the situation very quickly.
00:37 I have every hope that this one's going to be controlled very quickly.
00:42 And so while it's genuinely a disaster for the farmer, and it's absolutely not a disaster
00:47 for food because this virus has nothing to do with food.
00:51 It has to do with sick birds, but the eggs and the meat are just fine.
00:54 Some strains do more damage than others.
00:58 This strain on the Victorian farm, the H7N3, has definitely made birds sick.
01:03 And as an industry, a long time ago, we decided we didn't want sick birds from influenza.
01:09 And that's why there's the quarantine and the stamping out.
01:13 But the one in Antarctica is a bit naughty in as much as it seems to be moving between
01:19 some species.
01:20 And that's the reason we don't want it in Australia.
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