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Fri 20 Apr 2007 £600,000 payout for bird flu turkey farm
MPs reacted with anger yesterday after the government confirmed Bernard Matthews will get nearly £600,000 compensation for healthy birds slaughtered following the avian flu outbreak.
The Commons leader Jack Straw told MPs he felt "uncomfortable" at the high leve
Some 159,000 turkeys were culled at Bernard Matthews's Suffolk farm to prevent the H5N1 virus spreading.
The company will be reimbursed between £3 and £4 per bird, depending on their age, by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
Opposition MPs criticised both the £589,356.89 compensation and the failure to pinpoint exactly how the infection occurred.
Mr Straw told MPs: "All of us are uncomfortable about the reports of high levels of compensation to Mr Matthews' firm."
But the firm said the reimbursement only covered the cost of raising the birds and not their potential market value. "It has been documented that the outbreak has cost our business millions of pounds in lost revenue so in the circumstances we believe the compensation is fair and appropriate," the firm said.
DEFRA said compensation was paid to the owners of healthy animals destroyed due to disease prevention as an incentive for diseases to be reported early.
It is most likely the H5N1 infection came to Britain via imported turkey meat from Hungary before the infection came to light there, DEFRA's final report into the avian flu outbreak says.
Bernard Matthews also has operations in Hungary although a recent outbreak there was not linked to the firm's business there.
The only other alternative explanation - for which no evidence was found - was the "deliberate introduction" of material from infected premises in Hungary to the Suffolk farm, said the report. Investigators could not uncover any "proven" source for the bird flu outbreak at the Bernard Matthews plant in Holton, Suffolk.
The National Emergency Epidemiology Group's findings said the possibility of H5N1 going undetected in turkeys is a "rare event".
The precise source of the bird flu outbreak has not been found because it was a "very unlikely occurrence and an isolated event", the report adds. Investigators found no evidence of H5N1 in wild birds in Britain nor of undisclosed infection in domestic poultry in Britain.
FARMING, PAGE 41
