Macedonia chicken
gets RAF ride
www.reuters.co.uk
21st October 2005
A dead chicken that has waited four days in Macedonia for
its trip to a British laboratory equipped to check it for
evidence of bird flu is finally getting a flight out, courtesy
of the Royal Air Force.
"The sample should leave later today, first to Kosovo
and from there with a British military plane from KFOR to
the UK," Macedonia's chief vet, Sloboden Cokrevski, told
Reuters.
KFOR is the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, Macedonia's
northern neighbour .
"The reason for the delay is we don't have a direct
flight from Skopje to London, and we didn't want to risk sending
this kind of material with a commercial plane. It could have
gotten stuck in some airport as a bio-hazard threat."
The chicken was the only suspect bird found among hundreds
of dead fowl in a village north of the Greek border this week.
The rest died of Newcastle disease, a common poultry ailment.
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