HAMBURG: About 6,700 ducks and geese are to be slaughtered after an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu on a farm in east Germany, authorities said on Thursday.

The disease was confirmed on a farm in Schonberg in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the state agriculture ministry said. Several other bird flu cases in Germany have been reported in recent weeks.

Bird flu, which has led to the culling of hundreds of millions birds in the past years, usually strikes in Europe during autumn and winter, often with infection spread by wild birds.

It has recently been detected on farms in several countries including France, the Netherlands and Belgium.

France puts country on ‘high’ alert for bird flu

France raised the risk level of bird flu to ‘high’ from ‘moderate’ on Tuesday after new cases of the disease were detected, forcing poultry farms to keep birds indoors to stem the spread of the highly contagious virus.