HAMBURG (Reuters) - Germany has discovered a case of the highly pathogenic H5N8 strain of bird flu in a wild duck, the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said on Monday.
The virus was found in a mallard duck in Osterwald in Bentheim in the northern state of Lower Saxony, said the OIE, citing information from the German food and agriculture ministry.
An outbreak of H5N8 bird flu was also reported in wild swans in Germany in August. Germany was one of many European countries that found cases of the highly contagious H5N8 bird flu last year and earlier in 2017.
Germany culled more than 700,000 farm chickens, turkeys, ducks and other poultry types between November 2016 and March 2017 to combat bird flu.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan and Gus Trompiz, editing by Adrian Croft)
