The European Union and Balkan states on Monday imposed a ban on poultry imports from Turkey, where authorities have confirmed an outbreak of avian flu.

In Brussels, the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, announced a ban on all imports of live birds and feathers from Turkey.

According to the Commission, lab tests in Turkey have already confirmed that it was an outbreak of avian flu at a farm in northwestern Anatolia. Turkey has so far culled about 3,000 turkeys and chickens after reporting its first outbreak.

But the exact strain of the virus is not yet known, and scientists have yet to ascertain whether the strain is of high or low pathogenic avian flu.

The Turkish authorities are expected to send samples to the EU's laboratory in Weybridge, Britain in order to find out exactly which virus is at stake and whether it is the H5N1 strain, which has killed millions of birds and 65 people in Asia since 2003.

The H5N1 virus is the most deadly among a number of known versions of bird flu.

Results of laboratory tests are due on Oct. 12, the European Commission said.

In Rome, Italian livestock officials are asking the government for 10 million euros (12 million US dollars) to cope with the bird flu emergency.

The call for the funding came after Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace said on Sunday: "The whole world is worried and we want to convince everyone, starting with the European Union, to coordinate measures in the face of a possible pandemic."

Meanwhile, Balkan states, including Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia-Montenegro, on Monday confirmed the ban applied to Turkey and Romania, which reported bird flu cases at the weekend and started culling thousands of birds to prevent the disease from spreading.

"There is no danger of bird flu in Macedonia and the authorized institutions are following closely the situation," the director of the Veterinary Administration of Macedonia, Sloboden Cokrevski, said after announcing the ban.

Croatia said the import ban was imposed out of precaution because cases of bird flu had appeared in countries close to Croatia, which had earlier banned poultry imports from some Asian countries for the same reason.

Elsewhere in Russia, which has been hit by the endemic since July, Federal Service for Veterinary and Phitosanitary Inspection (Rosselkhoznadzor) said on Monday that only one farm in the country remained in the shadow of the bird flu virus.

The quarantine was still effective on the Utyatskaya poultry farm in the Kurgan region in southern Siberia, while relevant restrictions have been lifted in the Altai territory and Chelyabinsk, Omsk and Tyumen regions that had been stricken by the disease, Itar-Tass news agency quoted Rosselkhoznadzor as saying.

The outbreak now appears to be petering out with the departure of migratory birds ahead of winter. Russian Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said last week that the situation had stabilized but preventive measures were still needed.

Source: Xinhua