170000+ birds to be culled at Lancashire poultry farm near Preston

DUE to suspected case of avian flu (bird flu) being found at a poultry farm, run by Staveleys Eggs Limited, Environmental Health Officials have locked down the area around a poultry farm on the outskirts of Preston. The family, based in Coppull, Lancashire, have 170,000 birds, including around 50,000 free range laying hens and has been left devastated by it. All the birds are being culled on Saturday, 10 July 2015, as a precaution, but Public Health England say the risk to public health is very low and the Food Standards Agency say there is no food safety risk. As a result the Environmental Health Officials have locked down the area around a poultry farm on the outskirts and a 10km temporary control zone has been set up around the premises in the Grimsargh and Longridge area, meaning no poultry or other animals may be moved in this area.

Chief Vet, Nigel Gibbens has told the press that:- "We have taken swift precautionary action to limit the risk of disease spreading from the poultry farm. These measures that are now in place are to control the movement of poultry and humanely cull birds at the farm are part of our tried and tested approach to deal with such incidents. I would urge bird keepers to be vigilant for any signs of disease, report suspect disease to their nearest APHA office and to ensure they are maintaining good bio security on their premises. The decision to take precautionary action has been taken based on the clinical symptoms displayed by birds at the farm and emerging laboratory findings. The investigation into the suspect case and laboratory tests is ongoing. We have a strong track record of controlling and eliminating previous outbreaks of avian flu in the UK. The outbreaks in Yorkshire last year and Hampshire in February were both successfully contained, allowing restrictions to be lifted at the earliest opportunity."

Anyone suspecting avian flu (bird flu) should immediately contact their nearest Animal and Plant and Health Agency (APHA) office that can be found online.

Letters to editor:- "Help us find our stolen charity event banners for the Formby Festival"

"WITH just days to go to the festival, between the hours of 9.00am and 12 noon, on Friday, 10 July 2015, all banners and advertising for the Formby Festival have been removed / stolen, that advertises the event. These ruthless people have now taken funds directly from 'Help For Heroes', as all profits made go to this good cause. As these banners / posters have cost us over £700 to have printed and we will now have to replace them for next year, thus taking funds away from Help for Heroes. Whoever has taken the banners has not contacted us either to ask that we take them down or indeed to say they have them and return them to us. The people they have hurt most is Help for Heroes as this now means less funds will go to the very good cause. It is amazing that anyone would remove them and not even return them or even ask us to remove them is they were offending in any way. This event brings people into Sefton and hopefully brings them back throughout the year. We are supposed to be a tourist destination and encourage tourists. We cannot see a problem in advertising a local event once a year. In fact on checking our figures last year our 3 banners cost £347.00 and the year before £428 and this year £165, as if we utilize the ones from previous years we don't have to spend as much on the banners. Next year we hoped not to spend any money on banners as we had now purchased 10 banners. We also hoped to reuse all the poster boards and just change the date and we had spend over £150 on the poster and over £50 on the boards etc." Maria - Formby Festival.
 

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Purple Monkey Southport

ON Friday, 10 July 2015, we popped over to Purple..  Click on here to find out more.