Russia, Japan ban British poultry over bird flu

"The biggest threat to the poultry industry is not avian influenza. It is a backlash from consumers," said free range poultry farmer John Widdowson, adding that consumers appeared to have reacted calmly to the outbreak.

"Every day that goes by with no further outbreak we become more confident it is under control," he added.

Britain's leading supermarket chains, Tesco, Sainsbury, Wal-Mart Stores subsidiary ASDA and WM Morrison all reported sales were bearing up well.

Consumers in Europe's top poultry producing country, France, reacted more sharply to an outbreak last year with sales plunging more than 30 percent after the H5N1 virus was found on a turkey farm in February. They did not recover until mid-year.

The European Union's top health official said he was optimistic the bloc would be able to control bird flu this year despite outbreaks of the H5N1 strain in Britain and Hungary.

But EU Health and Food Safety Commissioner Markos Kyprianou added: "The virus is still around. We should never feel that we are safe."

Outbreaks have now been detected in birds in around 50 countries. The 12-year-old Egyptian victim was believed to have been infected after coming into contact with sick and dead birds, the WHO official said.

Sixty-three people have been killed in Indonesia, the country worst affected.

Many countries are testing plans to deal with a flu pandemic should the virus develop into a more dangerous form.

Japan, which has had four outbreaks of H5N1 at poultry farms this year but no human cases, held a drill on Monday to test its preparations.

(Additional reporting by Rachel Sanderson, Nigel Hunt and Deborah Haynes in London, Paul Hoskins in Dublin, Aleksandras Budrys in Moscow, Jeremy Smith in Brussels)