The virus of the bird flu, H5N1, has infected since 2003 a number of 271 people and killed 165, mostly in Asia.
The danger is in fact not the current variant of the virus, but a possible mutation, which could power it to trigger a worldwide epidemic, translated in millions of deaths.
On Saturday, the European Commission announced that an outbreak of bird flu was found on a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey manufacturer Bernard Matthews, growing 160,000 individuals. The virus had killed 2500 birds on the farm near Lowestoft in eastern England before being confirmed on Thursday by government experts.
The UK government is trying to stop the spread of the virus and set up a protection zone
within a 3 km (2 miles) radius and a 10 km surveillance zone around the affected farm.
This is the third confirmed case of H5N1 in poultry in the 27-country European Union, following recent out-breaks in Hungary and the 2005-2006 cases in Romania.
Just one of the 22 sheds of the farm has so far been touched by the infection. Worldwide, 200 million poultry birds have died by bird flu or have been killed to cease its spread. "This news is a bit surprising because it's not the time of year when we have a lot of bird migration. If it was going to happen we would expect it to happen in spring, not the middle of winter", said avian flu expert Colin Butter, at the UK's Institute of Animal Health. “It is now crucial to find out if this is the only outbreak, or whether it has spread from another, as-yet-undiscovered outbreak”.
"If this is a secondary case it is much more serious. If this is the first case, and we can stamp it out, the outbreak will be controlled."
Experts believe the outbreak is under control. "I don't think it has made any difference to the threat to the human population." said John Oxford, a virologist at London's Queen Mary's School of Medicine.
Previously, the H5N1 virus was discovered in the UK only in March 2006 in a wild swan found dead in Scotland, but the bird seemed to have caught the infection elsewhere, died at sea and been pushed ashore by the waves.
In May 2006, experts detected a milder virus, H7N3, in 50,000 chickens at three farms in Norfolk (eastern England), a finding that produced 58 million pounds ($115 million) losses to the UK poultry industry in 2006. "We're encouraging all farmers to be incredibly vigilant, and look at their flocks carefully. We do need to reassure consumers, however, that this is not an issue about safety of poultry", said Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers' Union, reassuring the consumers. “There has been a case of H5N1 avian influenza at the Holton site, but it is important to stress that none of the affected birds have entered the food chain", stated Bernard Matthews.
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