ClickAJob News

The Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) has warned that 130 workers at the Bernard Matthews farm at the centre of a bird flu scare this month face a temporary layoff.

The union said that the employees will be stood down for 20 days from tomorrow, adding that around 500 would face temporary unemployment "in the next few weeks".

All 130 workers will receive a one-off payment of £100, the TGWU said in a statement. Its national secretary, Chris Kaufman, called on the government to compensate those affected by the outbreak of the potentially lethal H5N1 virus on February 3rd.

"There is European precedent for direct government support for workers whose jobs have been affected by outbreaks, and the UK government should act in the same way as the Spanish and Italian governments did in similar circumstances," Mr Kaufman said.

"The government should… assist the workforce by ensuring that the benefits they are entitled to are processed without delay."

The poultry foodstuffs producer has reported a 40 per cent decline in sales since the bird flu outbreak, despite government insistence that properly cooked turkey meat poses no threat to humans.

Environment secretary David Miliband reiterated the government's "working hypothesis" that recent avian flu outbreaks in Suffolk and Hungary were linked in a ministerial statement to the House of Commons this afternoon.

Mr Miliband said that independent experts had established a 99.96 per cent genetic match between the virus found at the Bernard Matthews poultry farm in Suffolk and that in Hungary.

In order to prevent the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus from spreading in Britain the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) ordered the cull of 160,000 birds at the Suffolk farm last month.

Re-affirming his commitment to scientific evidence to maintain public trust on the government's handling of the issue, Mr Miliband explained that the government's investigation was ongoing.

"If wild birds had transmitted the disease, then the virus would have mutated and thereby changed its genetic makeup," he said.

"It is for this reason that since February 8th, our working hypothesis has been that the spread of the virus is associated with poultry products from Hungary."

He said that the issue of compensation for Bernard Matthews had not yet been addressed because the investigation remained ongoing and revealed that restrictions on the movement of poultry in the area surrounding the Suffolk farm would remain in place until at least the second week of March.

"There can be no guarantee against further outbreaks. In fact, the only guarantee is that there is a continual risk," he said, calling for constant vigilance among poultry farmers throughout the UK.