Dutch authorities discovered the virus at a poultry farm in the village Biddinghuizen, some 70 km (43 miles) east of Amsterdam.Officials said they were checking for bird flu at farms within three kilometers of the original site and imposed a ban on transporting poultry products within a 10-km (six-mile) radius. The Netherlands has more than 100 million hens, pigs, cows and sheep on high-intensity farms and their density makes the animals more vulnerable to disease outbreaks. Earlier this month the Netherlands banned duck hunting; in the western port of Rotterdam, a park closed its animal section after several aquatic birds were found to have died from the H5N8 virusT ests indicated that the birds were killed by an H5N8 variant of the disease “which is highly infectious” for poultry killing about 30 percent of infected birds but not “very dangerous to humans.”
