BRUSSELS — A federal order obligating Belgian farmers to lock up their poultry indoors  to avoid the threatened spread of bird flu has been postponed from Friday until Monday.  

The postponement comes after the Federal Food Agency (FAVV) reported problems handling the number of visitors to its website, newspaper ‘De Tijd’ reported on Friday.
 
Agency spokesman Pascal Houbaert said to give everyone the chance to determine whether they are located in a bird flu risk area, the FAVV has postponed the compulsory lock-up until Monday.

“Everyone can then consult the website without trouble,” Houbaert said on Thursday night.

Since the FAVV announced on Thursday that farmers and hobby farmers in risk areas will need to keep their poultry indoors, the agency’s website has been inundated with visitors. Consequently, the server was unable to cope.

“At peek moments, there were up to 5,000 hits per minute,” Houbaert said.

The compulsory lock-up was announced last week, but will now come into effect on Monday. The aim is to limit the amount of contact between poultry and/or domesticated birds and wild, migratory birds.

[Copyright Expatica News 2005]

Subject: Belgian news