00:02Victorian authorities have been preparing for this event for some time.
00:06The main question now really is how far the disease spreads.
00:10Preliminary testing confirms the detection when a resident in Portland in Victoria's southwest noticed a sick bird in their backyard.
00:17It means that Victoria has become the fifth state in Australia to have confirmed that H5N1 strain of bird flu.
00:26Currently the outbreak is worst in South Australia where authorities recently confirmed local transmission,
00:32which means the disease is now spreading among birds themselves.
00:36Today's detection in Victoria meanwhile has heightened fears that local wildlife could be at risk, including some threatened species.
00:44We know that from elsewhere in the world that if the virus were to be established in Victoria,
00:50then particularly in wildlife there'd be little we could do to actually minimise the spread or the impact on wildlife.
00:58The detection has also raised concerns in the poultry sector in Victoria.
01:02Now it's been just about two years since a less devastating strain of bird flu saw about two million birds
01:09culled as the poultry sector dealt with that outbreak.
01:14Some producers in Victoria have been encouraged to put in place additional biosecurity measures to try to reduce the risk
01:20that the virus will spread to their farms.
01:23Victorias themselves meanwhile have been encouraged to phone in sightings of groups of injured or sick or dead birds to
01:30wildlife authorities as those authorities do what they can to mitigate the risk of further spread.
01:35It's like a shock to 5-0, no one knows where the bird has answered the experiment of killing birds
01:35and the cat is not trying to get them done.
01:35It's a big part of the bird can be chilling for everyone to actually turn on the bird's pet, and
01:35they'll be the demē¶ć in its place.
01:35So it's up to the piÄter birds.
01:35And that's the first time we're selling on the bird's pick of the bird birds.
01:36So it's the best of the bird's pigs.
01:36And the- It's the best of the bird you're saying.
01:37So it's the bird's bird's- mundo dolly in the mud that it's not going to its blue.
01:37And it's this one day produced that's just as a bird's bird that the cat is better than the bird's
01:37-culled.
Comments