Bird flu pandemic warning as taxpayers shell out £42m to compensate farmers

Taxpayers shelled out nearly £42m to compensate farmers for bird flu last year as the disease tore through flocks in the UK’s worst-ever outbreak.

The payouts, which represented a 15-fold rise from the year before, were revealed after the World Health Organisation warned that the world must prepare for a potential human bird flu pandemic.

The H5N1 virus has jumped from birds to mammals, scientists say, after cases were found in otters, mink, foxes and seals believed to have eaten infected birds.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency has detected the H5N1 strain in five foxes and four otters in the UK since 2021, and last month mink in Spain became infected.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged nations to monitor infections in mammals closely.

Worldwide, around 140 million farmed birds – chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese – were culled last year to limit the spread of bird flu.

In the UK, more than 7.48 million died between October 2021 and last month, either from the virus itself or through culls in response to increasing outbreaks.

In 2020, the government paid just £253,500 in compensation to poultry farmers for losses. The following year it rose to £2.6m as the virus spread.

But last year payouts jumped to more than £41.5m, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has shown. In all, 251 farmers were given compensation, with an average of £165,300 each.

The birds that died or were culled because of avian influenza last year included 600,000 free-range turkeys and geese being reared for Christmas – nearly half the UK total.

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And in 2021-22, more than 800 wild birds in the UK tested positive for the virus, according to government figures.

Bird flu has a death rate of up to 90 per cent, studies have shown.

As well as foxes, otters and mink, seals have also been infected. The virus was confirmed last week in four harbour and grey seals found dead on the coasts of Aberdeenshire, Highlands, Fife and Orkney.

The discovery of it in other mammals has raised concerns that the pathogen could mutate and then jump to humans more easily. Until now, only people who have had close contact with infected birds or animals have themselves been infected.

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As far back as 2005, the WHO warned that if bird flu mutated into a strain more transmissible to humans, it could kill 150 million people.

Ayrton Cooper, also of Animal Justice Project, which received the FOI figures, said: “Taxpayers will be outraged to learn that their hard-earned money is going straight into the pockets of farmers to compensate for bird flu deaths, a disease perpetuated by their own industry.

“The continuation of avian flu is a result of over a billion birds being farmed every year in the UK and the government must end the bailing out of these violent and destructive industries.”

He called for plant-based food production to be subsidised.

Claire Palmer, also of Animal Justice Project, said: “The true cost of handouts isn’t just millions of pounds’ worth of taxes: 140 million birds worldwide have already experienced agonising deaths because of bird flu over the past year alone.”

Experts agree that diseases could emerge from chicken and turkey factory farming. A report in 2020 warned that intensively rearing chicken for supermarket meat was creating an ideal environment for new pandemic viruses to emerge.

The “cocktail” of infections to which birds are subjected could allow an outbreak of pandemic potential, it said.