Bird flu season fast approaching

An outbreak of avian influenza on a Russian poultry farm has left producers across Europe looking nervously towards the east as winter in the Northern Hemisphere approaches. Authorities confirmed a site housing almost 500,000 birds in the Kostromskaya region in north western Russia was infected with H5N2 highly pathogenic avian influenza. The virus belongs to the Asia lineage of H5 high path strain that has been in outbreaks across Asia, Africa and Europe since 2014. It follows 67 outbreaks of