Ananova:

A cull of thousands of birds has started after the confirmation of bird flu in a free-range flock of turkeys in Suffolk.

Experts examining the discovery of the H5 strain of the virus are also expected to establish if the birds have the highly pathogenic form of the disease.

Some 5,000 turkeys, more than 1,000 ducks and 500 geese on the rearing unit site in Redgrave, Suffolk, will be culled, while restrictions on other poultry in the area mean free range birds must be moved inside.

Protection and surveillance zones, set at 3km and 10km respectively, were put in place around the infected farm after the disease was confirmed, restricting the movement of birds and requiring them to be housed and isolated from wild birds.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) later announced further restrictions in a wider area as a "precautionary measure", after consultation with experts, meaning the whole of Suffolk and much of Norfolk were affected.

But the RSPB warned against assuming the disease had been spread by wild birds - a claim inaccurately made in the last case of the contagious H5 in the UK earlier this year in which nearly 160,000 birds were culled.

A report by Defra into the February outbreak at the Bernard Matthews poultry plant in Holton, Suffolk, later said it was most likely the H5N1 infection reached the flock via imported turkey meat from Hungary.

The current outbreak is the latest blow to hit the farming industry, which on Tuesday announced it was launching a compensation claim against the two laboratories at Pirbright, Surrey, which were at the centre of this summer's foot-and-mouth cases.

The alarm was raised on Sunday after a rise in death rates among the birds, which are owned by poultry producer Gressingham Foods, based in Woodbridge, Suffolk.

The site's operations director Geoff Buchanan said about 60 turkeys in a flock of 1,000 had tested positive for the virus.