{"id":4456,"date":"2025-05-08T15:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T15:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4456"},"modified":"2026-03-20T10:41:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T10:41:43","slug":"avian-influenza-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4456","title":{"rendered":"Avian Influenza"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>John Whittingdale\u00a0Conservative, Maldon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What steps his Department is taking to help prevent the spread of avian influenza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Daniel Zeichner\u00a0The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising this extremely serious issue. To prevent the further spread of disease and manage the risk of avian influenza,&nbsp;DEFRA&nbsp;and the&nbsp;Animal and Plant Health Agency&nbsp;have implemented well-established outbreak structures to control and eradicate disease, restore normal trade and support recovery in local communities. Avian influenza prevention zones are in force across the&nbsp;UK. To further protect farmers and help communities, we are currently investing \u00a3208 million in the future of the biosecurity labs at Weybridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>John Whittingdale\u00a0Conservative, Maldon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Does the&nbsp;Minister&nbsp;agree that avian influenza remains an existential threat to the poultry industry, and\u2014now that the French have decided to vaccinate their ducks\u2014will he agree to the&nbsp;National Farmers Union&nbsp;request that we introduce the vaccination of seasonal turkeys in order to protect the entire industry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Daniel Zeichner\u00a0The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As ever, the right hon. Gentleman makes a well-informed point. Vaccination has been considered for some time. There are trade issues, but as he says, the fact that the French are changing their position is useful. The Government are committed to exploring options for vaccination, and a cross-Government and industry avian influenza vaccination taskforce has been established. It published an initial statement on&nbsp;7 March&nbsp;and will report more fully this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theyworkforyou.com\/mp\/?p=10295\"><\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Whittingdale warns avian influenza threatens the poultry industry and urges vaccination of seasonal turkeys, pressing the Minister to follow France\u2019s approach to protect producers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speeches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4456"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5872,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions\/5872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}