A north Suffolk farmer has joined calls for a temporary ban on releasing birds bred for shooting after a series of outbreaks of bird flu in the county this year.

Alaistaire Brice - who runs free range egg producer Havensfield Happy Hens and Havensfield Waterfowl - said he backed bird charity the RSPB's call for a moratorium on the release of gamebirds and waterfowl as he urged the government to tighten up its approach to the disease.

But pro-shooting lobbyists argued there was no scientific basis for such a move. The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) argued that it would also lead to a loss of wildlife-friendly countryside management practices.

Avian influenza struck at nine sites all over the Suffolk during the latest winter season. A national bird lockdown was imposed to control what became the UK's most challenging bird flu season to date as the disease - which can be devastating to bird flocks - took hold.

Mr Brice pointed out outbreaks are still occurring in flocks even beyond the usual winter bird migration period which is seen as being the danger period.

"The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs' (DEFRA) policy has to change," he said. "I have been going on about this for five years. I am in full support of the RSPB - no one else has the guts to say it."

He added: "We simply cannot stand by and let the shooting fraternity carry on as they have been."

While his own free range chickens and his rare waterfowl operations kept strict biosecurity, he did not believe that all game bird rearing operations did. Their mixed status from being reared on farms to released into the wild also meant they could spread bird flu and other diseases to flocks such as his, he argued.

He was not against small family shoots, he added. "I'm not against shooting. I love small family-run shoots with 30 or 40 birds," he said. "It's gone on for hundreds of years but we have a disease in this country that's notifiable and dangerous."

However, he was against big commercial shoots where dead carcases were wasted. "I'm a farmer. People invite me to go on a shoot but I refuse because I don't enjoy it," he said. "Morally it doesn't sit well."

Mr Brice is chairman of Aviornis UK a birdkeepers' charity and keeps very rare birds including ones which are on the edge of extinction. These go to zoos and collectors around the world.

"Bird flu is bringing the whole issue of sustainable bird keeping to the fore," he said. "There is no doubt we are going to lose populations of birds which are going to be lost forever."

The RSPB said it wanted an immediate moratorium on the release of game birds and wildfowl for shooting as precautionary measure "to limit the further catastrophic spread of avian influenza in wild birds". The "glorious twelfth" - marking the start of the shooting season - began on Friday, August 12.

"The RSPB are shooting from the hip on this one but I do firmly agree with them," said Mr Brice. "I'm not making myself popular with lots of farmers, but the reality is you can't have one set of rules for one and one for another."

Every year around 55m pheasants and red-legged partridges and 2.6m mallard ducks reared in captivity and then released into the UK countryside to be shot for sport, said the RSPB. Many of these are imported from across Europe then held in pens to mature prior to release. This volume of released birds represents more than the total biomass of all UK native birds , the charity added. However, it did acknowledge the spread of bird flu from pheasants to wild birds had not been confirmed scientifically.

However, the GWCT said both DEFRA and the game management sector recognised the "significant threat" posed by highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) to the UK’s precious wild bird populations.

"There is already a ban on releasing gamebirds in all control zones, and businesses that wish to release them outside of zones are required to maintain stringent biosecurity standards and report any signs of avian influenza to minimise the spread of disease. This is standard good practice on game shoots," it said.

Dr Roger Draycott, director of advisory and gamebird policy at GWCT, said: “The RSPB’s position is not based on scientific evidence and if enacted would unquestionably lead to a reduction in activities including habitat provision and management, supplementary feeding and targeted predation management, all of which have been scientifically proven to deliver significant biodiversity benefits to the British countryside. These would be lost if there was a moratorium on gamebird releasing and management as proposed by RSPB.”