Norfolk bird flu: Risk level lowered as clean-ups continue

Bird flu outbreaks forced culls of thousands of chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks during the autumn peak, when Norfolk recorded more than 40 cases in October alone.

With case numbers falling recently, Defra has lowered the risk level of poultry exposure to the disease from "high" to "medium", and "low" where good biosecurity is applied.

But free-range birds are still being kept indoors under a preventative housing order, and farms are still working to clean, disinfect and restock affected sites.

Mark Gorton, a director of Traditional Norfolk Poultry, based in Shropham, near Attleborough, lost almost 300,000 birds on nine farms, mostly turkeys.

"The aftermath still goes on from the devastation we had before Christmas," he said.

"We are still cleaning down and we have still not been able to restock any of our farms.

"There are lots of lessons to be learned, and one is to have pre-agreed cleaning protocols for different farming systems.

"A lot of time was lost between identifying a case and getting cleaning protocols agreed.

"So we still have a lot of extremely arduous work to do, as we need almost operating theatre levels of cleanliness to make sure the virus is gone, which is in everybody's interest."

Bird flu has affected poultry farms across East Anglia - Picture: Newsquest (Image: Newsquest)

Mr Gorton said lots of "promising and positive work" is being done towards developing a vaccine as a long-term solution to bird flu.

"But there is still a huge amount of concern and a lot of people are not going to be growing Christmas turkeys this year because they don't want to take the risk," he added.

Meanwhile, as springtime temperatures rise, he is keen for his free-range birds to be allowed outdoors again "as soon as possible".

A Defra spokesperson said they were "unable to speculate on the housing measures at this point in time", but all control efforts are kept under constant review.