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Bernard Matthews turkey products
Sainsbury's has seen a 10% slump in poultry sales. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA
Sainsbury's has seen a 10% slump in poultry sales. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

Supermarkets alert for mass turkey recall

This article is more than 17 years old
Chief scientist raises possibility of emptying shelves of packaged meat

The government's chief scientist said yesterday that packaged turkey meat might have to be removed from supermarket shelves in a mass product recall, as the official inquiry into a bird flu outbreak at a Suffolk farm widened.

The frank admission by Sir David King came as the government's Food Standards Agency confirmed it is looking at the possibility that bird flu has entered the human food chain. The FSA is examining how the disease infected turkeys at the Bernard Matthews plant in Holton, Suffolk. It also emerged last night that two loads of meat had arrived at the plant this week from Hungary, where the strain of H5N1 involved is believed to have originated.

Sir David's comments appeared to be at odds with the FSA's insistence that it has no plans at present to recall turkey products. But it became clear yesterday that some supermarkets are already on standby to react to such an emergency.

Efforts to maintain consumer confidence in turkey and poultry appeared to have failed; Sainsbury's reported a 10% slump in sales. The store said: "We have seen a dip of approximately 10% in our poultry sales figures as a whole for the past five days compared to the same days last week. The situation is, however, evolving all the time, and the recent bad weather has also been a factor in the drop in sales." Tesco also reported a fall of up to 9% earlier this week.

Ministers' hopes that public fears about the crisis would have died down less than a week after the discovery of the H5N1 strain at the Suffolk plant faded as details of a three-pronged official investigation into bio-security at the plant emerged, with fears that the disease might have spread into the wild bird population.

Sir David said packaged turkey meat might be removed from supermarket shelves. "I think that is exactly what the Food Standards Agency will be looking at now," he said. He also warned ministers that avian flu could have been passed in the last week to the British wild bird population via imported infected meat from Hungary, opening up the possibility that it could spread throughout Britain.

During an emergency meeting of Cobra (the government's civil contingencies committee, which leads responses to national crises), Sir David confirmed to ministers that the latest scientific findings suggested the most likely scenario was that the virus had come to the UK via dead poultry rather than wild birds as had originally been thought. "The likelihood of [it] being transferred directly from Hungary to Suffolk via fresh meat is probably the one that we have got to look at the most carefully," he said.

Investigations were taking place to see how it could move from one plant on the Matthews farm directly into the supposedly sealed sheds that housed the live turkeys. "The real concern now is whether or not the virus is isolated to the birds that have been culled, or whether it has moved beyond that," Sir David said. "My bigger worry is that it might have got into the wild bird population."

Ben Bradshaw, animal welfare minister, said officials were looking at possible breaches of bio-security at the plant, and made clear that the company risked prosecution. He said: "Certainly the bio-security at the plant is something that the Food Standards Agency, the Meat Hygiene Service and we are investigating."

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