Eggs from a chicken farm in Tilligte, Overijssel were found to contain toxic pesticide fiprionil. As a result of this contamination, the farmer's over 3 thousand chickens were killed or taken away. His stock of some 45 thousand eggs was also destroyed, De Gelderlander reports.
This is the second time in less than nine months that this farmer was hit by such a disaster, according to the newspaper. The first time was in mid-August last year.
Around 23 thousand chickens were killed in a barn fire in Ospel, Limburg during the early hours of Thursday morning. The chickens could not be saved, the Limburg fire department said, ANP reports.
The fire started shortly after midnight in the barn of a company on Ommelpad. Firefighters managed to stop it spreading to two adjacent barns. No person was hurt.
The cause of the fire is not yet clear.
Bird flu was diagnosed in chickens on a poultry farm in Sint Philipsland, which forms part of the Zeeland municipality of Tholen. The company's approximately 42 thousand laying hens were culled, NOS reports.
The authorities believe that this diagnosis involves a mild variant of the H5 virus. But as a mild variant can mutate into a highly contagious and deadly variant, European rules require the culling of affected animals.
Dutch food and consumer product safety authority NVWA decided to test chicken meat for fipronil after all. Admin from company ChickFriend showed that the company used the toxic insecticide at a number of meat companies too, AD reports.
ChickFriend is considered the source of the fipronil contamination in the Netherlands.
"This week we are going to do sample slaughters to see whether there is fipronil in the meat. Last week all our attention was focused on eggs", a spokesperson for NVWA said to the newspaper.
Dutch food and consumer product safety authority NVWA added codes of another 14 poultry companies to its list of eggs contaminated with toxic insecticide fipronil. Foods that contain contaminated eggs are safe to eat, according to the federation of the Dutch foodstuffs industry FNLI based on its own research, NU.nl reports.
Dutch cheese and chicken may be at the center of a fraudulent trade scheme that made hundreds of thousands of euros. The Danish police believe that this money was used to fund terrorist groups, Dutch newspaper AD reports.
Supermarket chains Albert Heijn and Jumbo promised that all their home brand chicken meat and fresh chicken meals will be factory-farm chicken free by the end of this year, animal welfare group Wakker Dier announced. They are the first supermarket chains to take this step.
It's easy to think the Guys are simply taking us back to Vietnam in this installment of our weekly collaboration. In reality, Guys Love Cooking note the complexity of this seemingly simple dish, with inspiration from all over South Asia.
A third case of bird flu has been detected on a poultry farm in Kamperveen, Overjissel. The farm has a fixed total of around 10 thousand animals, which will be culled according to European rules.
Supermarket chain Jumbo has announced that factory farmed chickens will stop being sold in stores at the end of next year, Omroep Brabant reports.
Wakker Dier announced on Sunday that from August on, no plofkip will be used anymore in baby food of the drugstore chain Kruidvat.
Kruidvat writes in a letter to Wakker Dier that ‘the use of plofkip is not in accordance with the aim, to choose as much as possible for responsible ingredients’. A plofkip is a chicken which is brought in a short time to a desired weight, with all kind of negative effects for the chicken itself.
