poultry sector

Bird flu was found at a duck farm on Leidijk in Kamperveen on Tuesday morning, spokesperson Hennie de Haan of the Dutch poultry farmers' union NVP confirmed. "This is horrible news. We were just hoping to be past it", De Haan said to De Stentor.

"I got the news this morning. Usually this is the period that the wild birds fly away and that the avian influenza risk therefor leaves. That is why this news hit so hard", De Haan said to the newspaper. It looks like highly pathogenic variant of the virus, which is very bad for the animals. "But that has not been confirmed yet."

Dutch food safety authority NVWA is facing fierce criticism in the Tweede Kamer on Thursday. The parliamentarians have nothing good to say about the NVWA's actions in dealing with millions of Dutch eggs being contaminated by toxic insecticide fipronil. In summary, the MPs accused the NVWA of not communicating well, not responding adequately to an anonymous tip about the contamination and having an inadequate setup to deal with such a crisis, NU.nl reports.

Two men suspected of endangering public health in the fipronil contaminated eggs crisis were remanded into custody for 14 days by a magistrate on Tuesday. The two suspects are managers at Barneveld pest control company ChickFriend, the company considered to be the source of the fipronil contamination in the Netherlands, NU.nl reports.

Dutch food and consumer product safety authority NVWA denies that it first learned that eggs were maybe contaminated by toxic fipronil in November last year. The authority did receive a report about fipronil in that month, but that report only stated that it had been used to clean stables - there was no reason to believe that it could end up in eggs and pose a potential health risk, inspector general Rob van Lint said on Wednesday, RTL Nieuws reports.