Too little, too late: Avian flu and the shooting industry

On 20 August 2025, the government issued new Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) guidelines for game farms and shoots, citing a “recent increase in avian influenza cases in game birds and increasing risk of avian influenza”. The new rules urge those breeding and releasing pheasants and partridges to implement stricter biosecurity measures.

However, with thousands of young pheasants and partridges already moved to release pens — and the partridge shooting season due to begin on 1 September — this advice, which only came into force on 26 August, is not only belated but also ineffectual.

Animal Aid’s recent undercover investigations into game farms in Wales, uncovered not only terrible conditions for the poor birds held captive on the farms, but a huge pile of rubbish and discarded eggs and birds’ corpses — accessible to wild birds and other animals. We immediately reported this biohazard risk to the appropriate authorities pointing out that these piles contravened the Government of Wales’ Declaration of an All-Wales Avian Influenza Prevention Zone advice that: “waste and fallen stock must be held in appropriately biosecure facilities … with clear separation between both the live-bird part and the restricted access bio-secure barrier part”

The biohazard heap had been removed when we checked the farm again, but the authorities refuse to tell us what action, if any, had been taken. We have submitted a Freedom of Information request to the authorities regarding this, as well as the broader issue of outbreaks of avian influenza on game farms.

As detailed in our Killing Our Countryside report (which examines in turn the many harms done by the shooting industry to our countryside and wildlife), between 2021 and 2023 there were 10 outbreaks of HPAI in British game bird rearing premises. A 2022 government risk assessment concluded that infected (released) game birds posed a high to very high transmission risk of HPAI for waterfowl, birds of prey, corvids, waders, gulls and wild pheasants.

In 2023, the Scientific Advisory Group in highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAIG) to Defra stated that “the very high numbers of gamebirds that are released, almost doubling the biomass of the wild bird population over a short period of time, pose potential disease risks to other birds, not only as a direct source of transmission. They could also maintain HPAI in the other wild bird populations or increase infection pressure to resident wild birds over the late summer and early autumn, before migratory waterfowl species arrive in Great Britain in late autumn.“

Other groups and organisations such as the Raptor Persecution website and RSPB have called for a halt on the release of birds for shooting, due to the increased risk of avian flu.

The government’s recent advice feels like a tacit admission of the dangers posed by releasing millions of intensively reared, often-factory-farmed birds into the countryside — particularly at a time when avian influenza continues to devastate wild bird populations. Yet without meaningful action to curb or ban these releases, or to address the wider risks inherent in industrial animal farming, such guidance is ultimately hollow. Factory farming not only fuels the spread of disease but also places immense pressure on ecosystems, public health, and most importantly, means that animals suffer.

Take Action!

Sign our petition against the release and killing of birds