12 February 2007 - Britain must halt all imports and exports of poultry products, live birds and hatching eggs to prevent the risk of further outbreaks of bird ‘flu, Green MEP Caroline Lucas has warned.

Her comments came after it was revealed that tonnes of poultry products are regularly "swapped" between the UK and Hungary .  Eggs are sent from the UK to Hungary , the chicks are reared and slaughtered there, the slaughtered turkeys are sent back to the UK for extraction of the breast meat – and the rest is then returned to Hungary for manufacture into turkey sausages.

“This is a completely unnecessary trade – and it poses serious risks by allowing the spread of the potentially deadly H5N1 virus. It must be stopped immediately, and EU trade rules changed accordingly”   said the Green Party Euro-MP .

“The way to deliver real bio-security must be to halt all poultry movements – not just from countries where H5N1 has struck but also, as a precautionary measure, those countries where it has not yet been identified, as the government’s chief scientific advisor Professor Sir David King suggested over the weekend.

“I have written to the Commission today to call for EU trade rules to be urgently changed to allow the UK – and other member states – to protect their farmers and wider populations from the spread of the virus.

Dr Lucas, who has published reports examining the role played by factory farming and international trade in bird flu – and the practice of importing and exporting the same foods between the same countries – added:

“We must produce food locally wherever possible – both to cut out the environmental damage and CO2 emissions produced by transporting thousands of tonnes of food across the globe and to protect ourselves from potentially deadly diseases such as bird ‘flu - which, if it mutates to a form that is transmissible from human to human, could cause the deaths of millions across the globe. At the same time, we must halt the cruel and inhumane factory farming methods which are creating the perfect conditions for the mutation, infection and spread of animal diseases in the first place.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

1. In 2001, Caroline Lucas published "Stopping the Great Food Swap", which recorded how Britain was "swapping" thousands of tonnes of poultry meat, pork and lamb with a number of different EU member states, at enormous environmental cost. Read the report here.

2. Read Avian ‘Flu – Time to shut the intensive poultry ‘flu factories’? (2006) here.