The countryside surrounding the market town of Halesworth, near Holton, used to be remarkable mainly for its valuable nature reserve and, thanks to Bernard Matthews, for one of the largest turkey breeding operations in Europe.

Until this week, that is. Now, as red warning signs scream from the roadside, it is the centre of a public health emergency.

Yesterday afternoon, on the former military airfield that is now the site of the sprawling Matthews’ processing plant, men in protective white overalls and breathing masks dragged plastic bags of turkey carcasses past the low rows of battery sheds and grain towers. Workers at the entrance disinfected the wheels of lorries arriving to collect and dispose of the carcasses.

At the nearby White Swan pub a group of employees would not speculate on the future of their jobs. But the workers, who spend their ten-hour shifts culling, cleaning and crumbing turkey meat, said that they have been told to clock in as usual this morning.

Beyond the protection zone, the public response was calm but concerned. John Ball, the owner of a chain of hairdressing salons, said that he felt early on that he should have been enclosing the chicken run at the back of his garden, a couple of miles from the scene of the outbreak. No pamphlets had been passed through his letterbox; no public advice warnings had filtered through his door.

However, when the environ-mental health authorities announced the expansion of the emergency protection zone, days after the first turkeys started dying at the plant, he decided to take safety measures into his own hands.

Yesterday morning he moved his half dozen hens — among them Princess Consuela, Goldie and Whoopie — out of their uncovered chicken run into an enclosed coop. He hoped that this would protect them from any wild birds carrying the H5NI virus that could pass overhead.

Mr Ball, who bought the hens three years ago as a hobby, said that Defra and other agencies had made little effort to inform amateur bird owners what to do.

“I’m slightly surprised there hasn’t been more advice for people like me. There are many residents around here who keep poultry and ornamental birds,” he said, pointing to a friend who raises black swans and mandarin ducks as an example.

“At dawn you can hear them all crowing but, in fact, I only heard about it [the outbreak] from the newsagents.

“I had to watch the news bulletins for any serious information. Perhaps they don’t want to create panic but it certainly was slow.”

He said that unless any further announcements were made, Princess Consuela and her five companions would stay in their new makeshift quarantine quarters.

However, other residents living in the restricted zone were more alarmed by the authorities’ efforts — or lack of them — to contain the outbreak.

One owner of a private nature reserve in the Suffolk area told The Times that he was advised yesterday simply to “bag and bin” the body of a chicken that had died this week after displaying classic avian flu symptoms of diarrhoea and eye problems.

He said: “I had thought that the birds would be eagerly inspected and that vets would be sent around immediately. In fact, they did not seem to be interested at all.”

He said that he was told that at least ten dead birds had to be found before further action would be taken. “As someone who has experience in disease control, I’m not terribly impressed by that kind of response.”

He said that his request for a postmortem examination was rejected and that he was advised to bury the bird or wrap it up and put it out in the rubbish. He had now decided to carry out a post mortem privately.

“I felt as if I was being fobbed off. I remain amazed by that behaviour when we are facing a potentially fatal problem.”

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