Over 40,000 ducks have been destroyed at the farms in Mezofalva and Hajdunanas.

Protection and surveillance zones have been established around the farms.

Bird flu outbreaks were earlier identified at farms in Bekes, Jasz-Nagykun-Szolnok and Csongrad-Csanad Counties.

Bird flu detected at more farms in Hungary

The H5N1 avian influenza subtype has been identified at farms in Bacs-Kiskun County, in the south of the country, food safety authority Nebih said on Monday.

The outbreaks were detected at an egg farm in Soltszentimre and a duck farm in Bugac. Protection and surveillance zones have been established around the farms.

Bird flu outbreaks have now been identified at farms in six counties in Hungary.

Meanwhile, Agriculture minister meets with FAO head

Agriculture Minister Istvan Nagy met with Qu Dongyu, the director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in Rome on Tuesday, his ministry said.

Nagy said small farms, that grow crops and raise livestock, were the "backbone" of Hungary's agriculture sector. Their role in cultivation, maintaining biodiversity and preserving local values is "enormous", he added.

Nagy said Hungary was committed to reducing food waste at every level of the value chain. He also pointed to Hungary's programmes to advance agricultural developments in African countries such as Uganda, Chad and Kenya.

He acknowledged the FAO's scholarship support for 400 students enrolled in agricultural programmes at Hungarian universities.

Magyar: Hungary agriculture 'should thrive' thanks to EU support

Thanks to funding from the European Union, Hungary's agriculture should thrive, but "rural areas are becoming empty, and farms, orchards and horticulture is disappearing", Peter Magyar, the leader of the opposition Tisza Party said.

Magyar said in a statement to MTI that he attended a meeting of the European Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs as the body's vice president in Brussels on Monday.

Magyar said that he also spoke at a meeting of the Committee on Rural and Agricultural Development, and called for keeping the EU's area payments in place. At the same time, the EU should tackle "the obviously untenable situation that 10 percent of all EU farms are currently absorbing 80 percent of land-based funding, and 2 percent of farmers, in Hungary typically oligarchs with links to the government, receive 60-70 percent of development funding," the MEP said.

"Rather than supporting extensive grain production, Hungary should also receive support for more intense, big value-added, organic agricultural production," he said.

Further, Magyar said social support should be clearly separated from competitiveness funding.

"Hungary entered the EU 20 years ago, and received 17,000 billion forints in agricultural support in that period. Hungarian agriculture should be thriving, but instead, rural areas are becoming empty. Erstwhile animal farms, orchards and well-developed horticultural facilities are now taken over by grain fields or, even worse, are now covered in grass," Magyar said.
 

Source: 
MTI - The Hungarian News Agency, founded in 1881.

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